Massive use of chemical weapons in Syria, 1,429 killed including 426 children

[jimmy olsen]

Send in the carriers! 

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/21/us-syria-crisis-idUSBRE97K0EL20130821

BEIRUT/AMMAN | Wed Aug 21, 2013 5:46pm EDT

(Reuters) - Syria's opposition accused government forces of gassing hundreds of people on Wednesday by firing rockets that released deadly fumes over rebel-held Damascus suburbs, killing men, women and children as they slept.

With the dead estimated between 500 and 1,300, what would be the world's most lethal chemical weapons attack since the 1980s prompted an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council in New York.

Immediate international action is likely to be limited, with the divisions among major powers that have crippled efforts to quell two and a half years of civil war still much in evidence.

Russia backed up denials from the administration of President Bashar al-Assad by saying it looked like a rebel "provocation" to discredit him.

Britain voiced the opposite view: "I hope this will wake up some who have supported the Assad regime to realize its murderous and barbaric nature," Foreign Secretary William Hague said on a visit to Paris.

France, Britain, the United States and others called for an immediate on-site investigation by U.N. chemical weapons inspectors who arrived in the Syrian capital only this week. Moscow, urging an "objective" inquiry, said the very presence of that team suggested government forces were not to blame.

U.S. President Barack Obama has made the use of chemical weapons by Assad's forces a "red line" that in June triggered more U.S. aid to the rebels. But previous, smaller and disputed cases of their deployment have not brought the all-out military intervention rebel leaders have sought to break a stalemate.

U.S. Senator John McCain, a Republican critic of Obama's Syria policy, said on Twitter that failure to penalize previous gas attacks had emboldened Assad: "No consequence for Assad using chemical weapons & crossing red line," he said. "We shouldn't be surprised he's using them again."

The Security Council, where Russia has vetoed previous Western efforts to impose U.N. penalties on Assad, began a closed-door meeting but is not expected to take decisive action, with the big powers still at loggerheads.

Images, including some by freelance photographers supplied to Reuters, showed scores of bodies - some of them small children - laid on the floor of a clinic with no visible signs of injury. Some showed people with foam around their mouths.

The United States and others said it had no independent confirmation that chemical weapons had been used. U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said the head of the inspection team in Damascus was already discussing the latest claims with the government.

"SLEEPING DEAD"

Opposition activists cited death tolls ranging from about 500 to, by one account, some 1,300 after shells and rockets fell around 3 a.m. (0000 GMT) on Wednesday. In 1988, 3,000 to 5,000 Iraqi Kurds were gassed by Saddam Hussein's forces at Halabja.

One man who said he had retrieved victims in the suburb of Erbin told Reuters: "We would go into a house and everything was in its place. Every person was in their place. They were lying where they had been. They looked like they were asleep."

Doctors interviewed described symptoms they believe point to sarin gas, one of the agents Western powers accuse Damascus of having in an undeclared chemical weapons stockpile.

Syrian Information Minister Omran Zoabi said the allegations were "illogical and fabricated". Assad's officials have said they would never use poison gas against Syrians. The United States and European allies believe Assad's forces have used small amounts of sarin before, hence the current U.N. visit.

An opposition monitoring group, citing figures compiled from clinics in the Damascus suburbs, put the death toll at 494 - 90 percent killed by gas, the rest by bombs and conventional arms. The rebel Syrian National Coalition said 650 people died.

Activists said rockets with chemical agents hit the Damascus suburbs of Ain Tarma, Zamalka and Jobar during a fierce pre-dawn bombardment by government forces. The Damascus Media Office said 150 bodies were counted in Hammouriya, 100 in Kfar Batna, 67 in Saqba, 61 in Douma, 76 in Mouadamiya and 40 in Erbin.

A nurse at Douma Emergency Collection facility, Bayan Baker, said: "Many of the casualties are women and children. They arrived with their pupils constricted, cold limbs and foam in their mouths. The doctors say these are typical symptoms of nerve gas victims."

Extensive amateur video and photographs appeared on the Internet showing victims choking, some foaming at the mouth.

A video purportedly shot in the Kafr Batna neighborhood showed a room filled with more than 90 bodies, many of them children and a few women and elderly men. Most of the bodies appeared ashen or pale but with no visible injuries.

Other footage showed doctors treating people in makeshift clinics. One video showed the bodies of a dozen people lying on the floor of a clinic. A voiceover said they were members of a single family. In a corridor outside lay another five bodies.

Syria is one of just a handful of countries that are not parties to the international treaty that bans chemical weapons, and Western nations believe it has caches of undeclared mustard gas, sarin and VX nerve agents.

(Additional reporting by Erika Solomon in Beirut and Anthony Deutsch in Amsterdam, Niklas Pollard in Stockholm and Thomas Grove in Moscow; Writing by Peter Graff, Dominic Evans and Alastair Macdonald; Editing by Will Waterman)

[MadImmortalMan]

WMDs means nukes. It has to be nukes or it didn't happen.

[Ed Anger]

Go Bashir! 

[citizen k]

WMDs means nukes. It has to be nukes or it didn't happen.

Now it means anything from a pipebomb, a pressure cooker or an rpg.

[dps]

WMDs means nukes. It has to be nukes or it didn't happen.

Now it means anything from a pipebomb, a pressure cooker or an rpg.

Does that mean that we can expect Steve Jackson to be targetted for a drone strike?

[CountDeMoney]

Send in the carriers! 

And do what exactly, numbnuts?  Accelerate its transition to the Islamic Revolutionary Republic of Syria?

[derspiess]

The timing on this attack seems a bit odd.  Why would Assad do this now, when he's getting the upper hand, and when there are actual UN chemical weapons inspectors in the country?

But yeah, send in the carriers

[CountDeMoney]

The timing on this attack seems a bit odd.  Why would Assad do this now, when he's getting the upper hand, and when there are actual UN chemical weapons inspectors in the country?

Because he can.

Does Anybody Care If Assad Uses Chemical Weapons Again?
By Jeffrey Goldberg - Aug 21, 2013
Bloomberg

It was a year ago, almost to the day, that President Barack Obama warned the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, not to deploy chemical weapons in his fight to stay in power. "We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus," Obama said. "That would change my equation." He went on: "We're monitoring that situation very carefully. We have put together a range of contingency plans." Earlier, the president had said that Assad would be "held accountable by the international community" if he made the "tragic mistake" of using these weapons.

As we know now, Assad did use these weapons, on repeated occasions, in small-scale attacks. The administration's response to these confirmed reports of chemical weapons use came in June, when it authorized the transfer of small arms to the rebels, small arms the administration acknowledged would not tip the rebellion toward success.

There was one other international response to the use of these chemical weapons: After much delay, the United Nations sent a team of chemical weapons investigators to Syria this week. That team is, right now, not far from the Ghouta region east of Damascus, where, overnight, the Syrian regime is alleged to have launched its largest chemical weapons attack to date. The number of dead -- mostly civilians, including many children according to the reports we have -- stands anywhere from several dozen to more than a thousand. The videos of the attack aftermath, now being posted on YouTube at a rapid clip, are absolutely horrendous.

Two questions are raised by reports of this attack. The first, of course, is whether it happened the way Syrian rebels said it happened. That is why immediately dispatching the UN team, already in-country, to the affected areas is so vital. If this process worked the way it should, they would be there already. If the Syrian regime denies the UN inspectors permission to visit these areas, well, that is kind of an answer in itself.

The second question is, why would the Assad regime launch its biggest chemical attack on rebels and civilians precisely at the moment when a UN inspection team was parked in Damascus? The answer to that question is easy: Because Assad believes that no one -- not the UN, not President Obama, not other Western powers, not the Arab League -- will do a damn thing to stop him.

There is a good chance he is correct.

[alfred russel]

I checked CNN and the story wasn't a headline (it was off to the side a bit).

I checked Fox News, and it was a somewhat buried story with an Obama oriented headline.

Even the BBC didn't have it as the lead (that was Bradley Manning), but at least gave it second billing.

[Kleves]

Obama should pause the reset of the redline.

[Caliga]

I hope Assad wins.

[Berkut]

Is the utility of chemical weapons actually high enough to warrant their use?

I mean, I am not sure what the point is - it doesn't seem like it worth the trouble.

[Ed Anger]

I hope Assad wins.

Remove those disapproval points mister!

[Darth Wagtaros]

Is the utility of chemical weapons actually high enough to warrant their use?

I mean, I am not sure what the point is - it doesn't seem like it worth the trouble.

Show he is the baddest mother on the block?  About the only reason I can think of.

[Neil]

Well, we know that the rebels are completely dishonest.  But on the other hand, we know that Assad thinks (correctly) that the West is too cowardly to stop him.