Syrian regime responsible for 2018 chlorine attack, killing 43 people: Watchdog

By Mahmoud Barakat

ANKARA (AA) - The global chemical weapons watchdog on Friday said probes had found the Assad regime responsible for a 2018 chlorine attack on Douma city which left 43 people dead.

A report released by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that an Assad regime military helicopter targeted a residential area in the city with two cylinders loaded with chlorine gas.

Douma city is the provincial capital of the Rif Dimashq province and is located some 10 kilometers (around 7 miles) northeast of Damascus.

According to the report, two cylinders were filled at the Dumayr airbase northeast of Damascus and were dropped by the Syrian regime’s elite Tiger Force.

The investigation team “considered a range of possible scenarios and tested their validity against the evidence they gathered and analysed to reach their conclusion: that the Syrian Arab Air Forces are the perpetrators of this attack,” the organization said in a statement.

“The use of chemical weapons in Douma – and anywhere – is unacceptable and a breach of international law,” OPCW head Fernando Arias stressed.

The OPCW previously determined that the regime used chemical weapons in al-Lataminah in March 2017 and Saraqib in February 2018.

The OPCW, the implementing body for the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) based in The Hague, oversees the global endeavor to permanently eliminate chemical weapons.

The regime’s use of chlorine as a chemical weapon is a violation of its obligations under the CWC, to which it is a party, as well as of the UN Security Council Resolution 2118.