Syria has denied a report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) blaming Damascus for a 2018 poison gas attack that killed 43 and wounded dozens. “Syria completely rejects the report,” the Syrian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday, according to the state news agency Sana. “The report lacks scientific evidence,” the ministry said, criticizing “wrong conclusions”.
In its report published on Friday, the organization stated that the careful evaluation of evidence pointed to the perpetrators of the Syrian Air Force. There is “reasonable reason to believe” that at least one Syrian Air Force helicopter dropped the two barrels of poison gas on the city of Douma, which was then controlled by rebels.
The attack had led to conflicts between the West and Syria for years. Western states had blamed the leadership of ruler Bashar al-Assad. Syria and its ally Russia claimed that rebels disguised as aid workers were responsible for the attack on behalf of the United States.
Days following the attack, the United States, France and Britain launched airstrikes on targets they said were part of Syria’s chemical weapons program.
On the evening of April 7, 2018, two barrels of poisonous chlorine gas were dropped from a helicopter onto two residential buildings in Douma, near the capital Damascus. According to the OPCW report, the helicopters belonged to the Syrian elite unit “Tiger Forces”. One of the containers broke, killing 43 people from the highly concentrated gas, the report said. The second container hit an apartment, from where the gas slowly escaped.
Damascus denies using chemical weapons. In 2013, following a suspected sarin attack in the Ghouta region that killed 1,400, Damascus pledged to give up its stockpiles of chemical weapons. The use of such weapons is prohibited worldwide under the War Weapons Convention.
Syria is a member of the OPCW but was stripped of its voting rights in 2021 over repeated use of chemical weapons.
Austria strongly condemned the use of chemical weapons by Syria. “Everyone who caused such an operation must be held accountable,” the State Department said on Twitter. Austria has “full confidence in the impartial and professional work of the OPCW”.
