Chlorine used in Syria’s Douma?

The world’s chemical weapons watchdog said Friday that chlorine was used against the rebel-held Syrian town of Douma in 2018, in a long-awaited final report on the deadly attack.

 The report by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was based on a visit by inspectors to the site of the attack which witnesses said killed 43 people.

Western powers led by the United States blamed the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the incident and unleashed air strikes on military installations in response.

The Hague-based watchdog said two cylinders likely containing chlorine smashed into a housing block in the town. The OPCW report said that there were “reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon has taken place on 7 April 2018.

This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine.” It said however that it found no evidence of the use of nerve agents in Douma, which had been previously alleged by some parties in the conflict. The findings confirmed an interim OPCW report released last July saying that traces of chlorine were found.

 ‘Staged provocation’ Russia, which backs Assad, rejected the report and said the attack was “staged” by Syrian rescue volunteers known as the White Helmets.

“In spite of all the evidence presented by Russia, Syria, and even British journalists that the Douma incident is no more than ‘White helmets’ staged provocation, Technical Secretariat of OPCW states in today’s report that chlorine was used in Douma as a chemical weapon,” the Russian Embassy in The Hague tweeted.

British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt however said Syria should now honour its 2013 vow to destroy all its chemical weapons, made after 1,400 people were killed in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta in what the UN said was an attack using the nerve agent sarin. France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian echoed the comments, calling for “the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime to end and for the perpetrators of such acts to be punished”.

The report said “two yellow industrial cylinders dedicated for pressurised gas” were found, one of which had landed on top of the housing block and crashed through it. It said it was “possible that the cylinders were the source of the substances containing reactive chlorine.”

The OPCW said witnesses told the team there were “43 decedents related to the alleged chemical incident, most of whom were seen in videos and photos strewn on the floor of multiple levels of an apartment building and in front of the same building.”

The watchdog also rejected claims by the Syrian regime that the gas came from an alleged rebel chemical weapons facility and storehouse in the area.