Syria gas attack: France says chemical weapon 'bears the signature' of Bashar al-Assad

Eldorar Alshamia Editor | 27 April, 2017
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A chemical analysis of samples taken from a deadly sarin gas attack in Syria earlier this month "bears the signature" of President Bashar al-Assad's Government and shows it was responsible for the deadly assault, France says.
Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said France made the conclusion after comparing samples from a sarin attack in Syria in 2013 that matched the new ones.
The findings came in a six-page report published on Wednesday.
Russia's Government promptly denounced the French report, saying the samples and the fact the nerve agent was used were not enough to prove who was behind the attack.
Mr Assad has repeatedly denied that his forces used chemical weapons and claimed that evidence of a poison gas attack is made up.
But Mr Ayrault said France knew "from sure sources" that "the manufacturing process of the sarin that was sampled is typical of the method developed in Syrian laboratories".
"This method bears the signature of the regime and that is what allows us to establish its responsibility in this attack," he added, saying France was working to bring those behind the "criminal" atrocities to international justice.

France's Foreign Ministry said blood samples were taken from a victim in Syria on the day of the April 4 attack in the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province, in which more than 80 people were killed.

Environmental samples, the French ministry said, showed the weapons were made "according to the same production process as the one used in the sarin attack perpetrated by the Syrian regime in Saraqeb" on April 29, 2013.

Mr Ayrault also said French intelligence services showed only Syrian Government forces could have launched such an attack using a bomber taking off from the Sharyat airbase.
"The regime's air force … is the only one with these aerial capabilities," Mr Ayrault said.
Meanwhile, France's presidency said the country's intelligence services presented evidence showing the Syrian Government "still holds chemical warfare agents, in violation of the commitments to eliminate them that it took in 2013".

Aya Fadl, lies on a bed, with an oxygen mask to heal breathing difficulties following a suspected chemical attack.

It said that information would be made public, without offering details.

It is thought that Mr Assad's Government still has a stockpile of tons of chemical weapons, despite saying it had handed over all of them.

Speaking to reporters in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia's position on the attack was "unchanged" and that "the only way to establish the truth about what happened near Idlib is an impartial international investigation".

Russia has previously pushed for an international probe, and Mr Peskov expressed regret that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW, had turned down the Syrian Government's offers to visit the site of the attack and investigate.