The global chemical weapons watchdog blamed Syria on Friday for a 2018 chlorine attack that killed 43 people, in a long-awaited report on the case that has fueled tensions between Damascus and the West.
Investigators say there are “substantial reasons to believe” that at least one Syrian air force helicopter dropped two cylinders of poison gas in the rebel-held town of Douma during Syria’s civil war.
Damascus and its ally, Moscow, claimed the attack was carried out by rescue workers at the behest of the United States, which launched airstrikes in Syria days later along with Britain and France.
The Douma case also sparked controversy after leaks from two former employees cast doubt on earlier findings by the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
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But the OPCW said that its investigators have “considered various scenarios” and concluded that “the Syrian Arab Air Force was the perpetrator of this attack.”
“The use of chemical weapons in Douma – and anywhere else – is unacceptable and a violation of international law,” OPCW Director General Fernando Arias said in a statement.
“The world now knows the truth – until the international community has to act, in the OPCW and others.”
– ‘Poison gas’ in Syria –
The watchdog said that “at least one Mi-8/17 helicopter of the Syrian Arab Air Force, departing from the Dumayr air base and operating under the control of the Tiger Forces, dropped two yellow cylinders” on April 7, 2018.
The cylinder hit two residential buildings in central Douma, he said.
The first “fragmented and rapidly released poisonous gas, chlorine, with a very high concentration, which spread rapidly through the building, killed 43 named people and affected dozens more,” the report said.
The second cylinder hit the apartment and slowly released some chlorine “inflammation affecting those who first came to the place.”
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Investigators have examined 70 environmental and biomedical samples, 66 witness statements, and other data including forensic analysis, satellite images, gas dispersion models, and trajectory simulations, he said.
Douma was held by rebels at the time of the incident, which came during a major offensive by Syrian government forces to retake the town near the capital Damascus.
Emergency workers say they have treated people with breathing problems, foaming at the mouth and other symptoms.
OPCW inspectors visited the scene after a delay and determined that chlorine was used, but they did not have a remit in time to say who they believed was behind the attack.
But thanks to the new rules, Syria and Russia have opposed, the watchdog can now point the finger of blame, and in this case it has ended in Damascus.
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that the Syrian Arab Air Force is the perpetrator of the chemical weapons attack … in Douma,” he said.
– ‘Standard of proof’ –
Syria has accused rebels and emergency workers of carrying out the attack by carrying the bodies and filming it, or denying that an Islamic chemical weapons factory had been hit.
But the OPCW said the team was “pursuing the line of inquiry and the scenario suggested by the Syrian authorities and other state parties, but was unable to obtain concrete information in support of it.”
He also said it was “regrettable” that Syria had not allowed access to the site to investigate.
The report also rejected claims by a former inspector that the watchdog altered its original findings in 2018 to make evidence of a chemical attack appear more conclusive.
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He added that the basis of “reasonable grounds” is “the evidentiary standard consistently adopted by international fact-finding bodies and commissions of inquiry.”
Damascus denies using chemical weapons and insists it has given up its stockpile under a 2013 agreement, prompted by a suspected sarin gas attack that killed 1,400 in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta.