MOSCOW, May 13 (RIA Novosti) – International rights organization Human Rights Watch said Tuesday it has “strong evidence” that the Syrian Army used chlorine gas against insurgents in several cities last month.
“Evidence strongly suggests that Syrian government helicopters dropped barrel bombs embedded with cylinders of chlorine gas on three towns in Northern Syria in mid-April 2014,” the watchdog said in a statement.
The statement added that the conclusion was reached from interviews with witnesses, videos and photographs from the scene. The chlorine gas cylinders were fixed to the barrel bombs that military helicopters dropped on cities housing anti-government militia, according to the report. The specific cities that were hit by the attacks were not named.
It was earlier reported that chlorine gas was used in clashes between the Syrian Army and rebels near the town of Kfar Zeita on April 11-13. Two people were killed and about a hundred sustained injures in the attack. Damascus blamed the chemical attack on the Islamic group Jabhat al-Nusra, a branch of al-Qaeda operating in Syria and Lebanon.
Over 92 percent of Syria's chemical stockpile has been removed from the country, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said last month. The remaining 16 containers with chemical weapons are stored near Damascus in the area occupied by opposition groups.
Syria’s most dangerous chemicals are scheduled to be destroyed by the end of June as part of a cooperative effort to defuse international tensions related to the country’s ongoing civil war.
Russia, the US, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Norway and Finland have contributed military equipment and personnel to the effort to transport chemical weapons out of Syria for destruction by hydrolysis in international waters.
