Syria’s opposition accused President Bashar Assad’s forces of gassing many hundreds of people – by one report as many as 1,300 – on 21 August in what would, if confirmed, be the world’s worst chemical weapons attack in decades. Western and regional countries called for UN chemical weapons investigators – who arrived in Damascus just three days ago – to be urgently dispatched to the scene of one of the deadliest incidents of the two-year-old civil war. Russia, too, urged a fair and professional investigation but Assad’s biggest foreign ally also heaped skepticism on his enemies’ claims.
George Sabra, one of the leading opponents of Assad, said the death toll was 1,300 killed by poison gas released over suburbs east of Damascus. “Today’s crimes are … not the first time the regime has used chemical weapons. But they constitute a turning point in the regime’s operations,” he told a news conference in Istanbul. “This time it was for annihilation rather than terror.”