Watchdog inconclusive on Syria’s claims of rebel ‘chlorine attack’

The global chemical weapons watchdog said Friday it could not establish whether toxic arms were used in a 2018 incident that Syria described as a chlorine attack by rebels.

Damascus and its ally Moscow blamed “terrorist groups” for the November 24, 2018 incident in the government-held city of Aleppo, which Russia responded to with air strikes.

The Syrian government formally requested an investigation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which dispatched a fact-finding mission (FFM) in early 2019 to Syria.

But the OPCW said Friday that information, interviews and laboratory analysis obtained by the team “did not allow the FFM to establish whether or not chemicals were used as a weapon in the incident.”

The team’s 98-page report said the breathing difficulties that Syrian officials said had afflicted dozens of victims “may have been caused by exposure to some type of non-persistent substance that produced mild-to-moderate airway irritation”.

But it added that witness accounts could not pinpoint where the substance, if any, came from, while metal fragments provided by the Syrian government “could not be linked to the reported incident”.

The release of the report comes days after Russia held a briefing at the United Nations in New York casting doubt on the OPCW’s investigations in Syria.

The United States and Britain accused Russia of fabricating the story about chemical weapons use by rebels in Aleppo to undermine a truce in the city of Idlib.

US intelligence said Russian and Syrian forces had instead fired tear gas.

In a separate report issued on Friday, the OPCW said it could not confirm whether or not chemical weapons were used in an alleged chlorine attack on Saraqeb, a town 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of Aleppo, in August 2016.

Residents said chlorine gas had been used in the attack while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 24 people suffered breathing difficulties.

The OPCW has confirmed multiple uses of chemical weapons in Syria’s civil war, most recently blaming a 2017 attack using the nerve agent sarin on President Bashar al-Assad’s air force.

Syria and Russia have dismissed the probe’s conclusions, alleged that chemical weapons attacks were faked, and accused Western powers of politicising the OPCW, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013