Syrian Air Force May Have Dropped Chlorine Bomb On Town in Opposition Area in 2018, Says Watchdog

Syrian Air Force May Have Dropped Chlorine Bomb On Town in Opposition Area in 2018, Says Watchdog
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Syrian Air Force May Have Dropped Chlorine Bomb On Town in Opposition Area in 2018, Says Watchdog

Syrian Air Force May Have Dropped Chlorine Bomb On Town in Opposition Area in 2018, Says Watchdog

The global chemical weapons watchdog has “reasonable grounds to believe” that Syria’s air force dropped a chlorine bomb on a residential neighborhood in the opposition-controlled Idlib region in February 2018, a report released on Monday said.

There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government. Syria and its military ally Russia have consistently denied using chemical weapons during President Bashar al-Assad’s decade-old conflict with opposition forces, saying any such attacks were staged by opponents to make Damascus look like the culprit.

The new report by the OPCW chemical weapons watchdog’s investigative arm said no one was killed when the cylinder of chlorine gas, delivered in a barrel bomb, hit the Al Talil neighborhood in the city of Saraqib in February 2018, Reuters reported.

However, a dozen people were treated for symptoms consistent with chemical poisoning, including nausea, eye irritation, shortness of breath, coughing and wheezing, it said.

Chlorine is not an internationally banned toxin, but the use of any chemical substance in armed conflict is banned under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, the implementation of which is overseen by the OPCW watchdog based in The Hague.

In April 2020, the OPCW’s Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) concluded that Syrian warplanes and a helicopter had dropped bombs containing chlorine and sarin nerve gas on a village in Syria’s Hama region in March 2017.

The latest report by the IIT also implicated Syrian regime forces. It concluded that “there were reasonable grounds to believe that at least one cylinder filled with chlorine was dropped from a helicopter of the Syrian Arab Air Forces, belonging to the Tiger Forces.”

The Tiger Forces are an elite Syrian military unit generally used in offensive operations in the war, which has largely subsided with Assad having wrested back most territory with crucial Russian and Iranian support.

“All elements indicated the presence of Tiger Forces in the vicinity of Saraqib. They found that a helicopter was just flying above the bombed area at the moment of the gas release,” a summary of the OPCW report said.

It said that samples collected from the scene were examined and other possible means of chlorine contamination considered, but the OPCW team said nothing was found to indicate that the incident was staged by Assad’s adversaries.

The team identified individuals believed to be involved in the alleged attack but did not release them.

Between 2015 and 2017, a joint United Nations-OPCW team known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) found that Syrian government troops had used the nerve agent sarin and chlorine barrel bombs on several occasions, while ISIS militants were found to have used mustard gas.



Israeli Army Orders Gaza City Suburb Evacuated, Spurring New Displacement Wave

A Palestinian man points at a damaged building in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on November 20, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
A Palestinian man points at a damaged building in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on November 20, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
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Israeli Army Orders Gaza City Suburb Evacuated, Spurring New Displacement Wave

A Palestinian man points at a damaged building in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on November 20, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
A Palestinian man points at a damaged building in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on November 20, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

The Israeli military issued new evacuation orders to residents in areas of an eastern Gaza City suburb, setting off a new wave of displacement on Sunday, and a Gaza hospital director was injured in an Israeli drone attack, Palestinian medics said.
The new orders for the Shejaia suburb posted by the Israeli army spokesperson on X on Saturday night were blamed on Palestinian militants firing rockets from that heavily built-up district in the north of the Gaza Strip.
"For your safety, you must evacuate immediately to the south," the military's post said. The rocket volley on Saturday was claimed by Hamas' armed wing, which said it had targeted an Israeli army base over the border.
Footage circulated on social and Palestinian media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed residents leaving Shejaia on donkey carts and rickshaws, with others, including children carrying backpacks, walking.
Families living in the targeted areas began fleeing their homes after nightfall on Saturday and into Sunday's early hours, residents and Palestinian media said - the latest in multiple waves of displacement since the war began 13 months ago.
In central Gaza, health officials said at least 10 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes on the urban camps of Al-Maghazi and Al-Bureij since Saturday night.
HOSPITAL DIRECTOR WOUNDED BY GUNFIRE
In north Gaza, where Israeli forces have been operating against regrouping Hamas militants since early last month, health officials said an Israeli drone dropped bombs on Kamal Adwan Hospital, injuring its director Hussam Abu Safiya.
"This will not stop us from completing our humanitarian mission and we will continue to do this job at any cost," Abu Safiya said in a video statement circulated by the health ministry on Sunday.
"We are being targeted daily. They targeted me a while ago but this will not deter us...," he said from his hospital bed.
Israeli forces say armed militants use civilian buildings including housing blocks, hospitals and schools for operational cover. Hamas denies this, accusing Israeli forces of indiscriminately targeting populated areas.
Kamal Adwan is one of three hospitals in north Gaza that are barely operational as the health ministry said the Israeli forces have detained and expelled medical staff and prevented emergency medical, food and fuel supplies from reaching them.
In the past few weeks, Israel said it had facilitated the delivery of medical and fuel supplies and the transfer of patients from north Gaza hospitals in collaboration with international agencies such as the World Health Organization.
Residents in three embattled north Gaza towns - Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun - said Israeli forces had blown up hundreds of houses since renewing operations in an area that Israel said months ago had been cleared of militants.
Palestinians say Israel appears determined to depopulate the area permanently to create a buffer zone along the northern edge of Gaza, an accusation Israel denies.
Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed more than 44,000 people, uprooted nearly all the enclave's 2.3 million population at least once, according to Gaza officials, while reducing wide swathes of the narrow coastal territory to rubble.
The war erupted in response to a cross-border attack by Hamas-led militants on Oct. 7, 2023 in which gunmen killed around 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.