Ghouta chemical attack

Ghouta chemical attack
Part of the Syrian civil war
File:Ghouta chemical attack map.svg Map of areas affected by the alleged chemical attack and the location of the UN inspection team's hotel during the attack.
Location	Ghouta, Syria
Date	21 August 2013 (2013-08-21)
Deaths	281 or more killed (French intelligence service) 355 died in 3 hospitals (MSF claim) 494 killed (The Damascus Media Office) 502 killed (SOHR) 588 killed (VDC) 635 killed (SRGC) 1,222 killed (HRO East Ghouta) 1,300 killed (SNC) 1,338 killed (LCC) 1,429 killed (United States) 1,729 killed (FSA) note: Death tolls not final Some death tolls are only in bodies collected
Injured	3,600 patients

The 2013 Ghouta attacks were an alleged chemical weapons bombardment that occurred on Wednesday, 21 August 2013. The Syrian civil war events allegedly took place over a short span of time in several opposition-controlled or disputed areas of the Ghouta suburbs of the Markaz Rif Dimashq District that adjoins Damascus, Syria. The Syrian government and rebels have blamed each other for the attacks. Reported death tolls vary from 281 to 1,729. Some sources report that none of the victims they saw displayed physical wounds. If the death toll is confirmed, the incident would be the deadliest use of chemical weapons since the Iran–Iraq War.

The attack occurred a few kilometers from United Nations investigators who had just arrived at Syria's invitation to investigate several previous alleged uses of chemical weapons. The UN made a formal request to visit Ghouta on August 22 or 24, or on both days.On the 23 the Syrian military continued to shell Ghouta.Ban Ki-moon urged an immediate investigation of any use of chemical weapons.On 24 August, UN officials arrived in Damascus and negotiated access for the U.N. inspectors, which the Syrian government approved the next day. Inspectors worked from August 26 to 31 investigating sites of the alleged attacks.

Syria, Russia, and Iran have stated their belief that the opposition to Syria President Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the attacks, while the European Union, the Arab League, along with the United States and nine other countries have stated that the Syrian government was responsible for the incident, whether or not Syrian President Assad personally ordered the attacks.

Background

Main articles: Syria and weapons of mass destruction § Syrian civil war, Syrian civil war § Chemical weapons, and Khan al-Assal chemical attack

The Ghouta region is composed of densely populated suburbs, which are collectively known as the province of Rif Dimashq, or "Damascus countryside", have been hotbeds of opposition since the start of the uprising against Assad's Regime in March 2011. The opposition have controlled most of the Rif since last year, cutting off Damascus from its hinterland Most of the areas are under siege and have been the scene of continuing clashes for more than a year. and regime forces have launched repeated assaults trying to dislodge them, devastating the area. However, opposition forces have been able to maintain their advance and prevented government forces from storming a number of critical areas in the city. On the day of the attack, the Syrian government launched an offensive to capture opposition-held Damascus suburbs.

The alleged attack came exactly one year and one day after U.S. President Barack Obama's Monday August 20, 2012 "red line" speech, in which he warned ""the Assad regime -- but also to other players on the ground" that chemical weapons use in Syria, which is one of five non-signatories to the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, would trigger American intervention. Since his speech, and prior to the chemical attacks in Ghouta, chemical weapons were suspected to have been used in at least four attacks in the country.

On 23 April 2013, the New York Times reported that the British and French governments had sent a confidential letter to the United Nations Secretary General, claiming that there was evidence that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons in Aleppo, Homs, and perhaps Damascus. Israel also claimed that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons on 19 March near Aleppo and Damascus. By 25 April the U.S. intelligence assessment was that the Assad government had likely used chemical weapons – specifically sarin gas. However, the White House announced that "much more" work had to be done to verify the intelligence assessments. On 24 April, Syria had refused an investigation team from the UN from entering Syria, though Jeffrey Feltman, UN under-secretary for political affairs, said that a refusal would not prevent an inquiry from being carried out. On 23 March 2013, Syrian government unusually requested the UN send inspectors to investigate, an incident in town of Khan al-Assal, as it said opposition had used chlorine-filled rockets. However, they later refused to extend UN investigation.

On 4 June 2013, a U.N. report stated that there are "reasonable grounds" to believe that limited amounts of chemical weapons have been used in at least four attacks in the civil war, but more evidence is needed to determine the exact chemical agents used or who was responsible. Stating that it has not been possible "to determine the precise chemical agents used, their delivery systems or the perpetrator." On 22 June the head of UN human rights investigation, Paulo Pinheiro, said the UN could not determine who used chemical weapons in Syria after the evidence had been delivered by the United States, Britain and France. However, the commission reported that there were "reasonable grounds to believe that chemical agents have been used as weapons".

After clandestinely spending two months in Jobar, Damascus, several reporters for the French news media Le Monde personally witnessed the Syrian army's use of chemical weapons on civilians. French intelligence later said that samples from the Jobar attack in April had confirmed the use of sarin.

On 13 June, the United States announced that there is definitive proof that the Assad government has used limited amounts of chemical weapons on multiple occasions on rebel forces, killing 100 to 150 people. Sarin was the agent used with no proof that the opposition had access to such weapons. Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes did not confirm whether this proof showed that Syria had crossed the "red line" established by President Obama by using chemical weapons. Rhodes stated that: "The president has said that the use of chemical weapons would change his calculus, and it has." Tests conducted by France confirmed the United States conclusions, according to the French government. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that "the accusations of Damascus using chemical weapons put forth by the USA are not backed by credible facts." Larov stated that it makes no sense for Syrian government to use chemical weapons when the government already maintains a military advantage over the rebel fighters. The White house has stated the evidence against Assad not ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ but passes ‘common-sense test’.

The attacks

Map of the August 2013 Ghouta chemical attacks. Effected neighborhoods: Hammuriyah, Irbin, Saqba, Kafr Batna, Mudamiyah, Harasta, Zamalka, Ain Terma., Jobar.

The attacks reportedly occurred between 02:00 and 05:00 in the morning on 21 August 2013, in the rebel-held and mostly Sunni Ghouta agricultural area, just east of Damascus. The area had been under an Army siege backed by Hezbollah for months. The attacks had affected two separate opposition-controlled districts in Damascus Suburbs, located 16 kilometers apart. According to local residents, the Zamalka neighborhood in Eastern Ghouta was struck by rockets at some time between 2 and 3 a.m., and the Moadamiya neighborhood in Western Ghouta was struck by rockets at about 5 a.m., shortly after the completion of the Muslim morning prayer.

Syrian human rights lawyer Razan Zaitouneh, present in Eastern Ghouta, stated, "Hours [after the shelling], we started to visit the medical points in Ghouta to where injured were removed, and we couldn't believe our eyes. I haven't seen such death in my whole life. People were lying on the ground in hallways, on roadsides, in hundreds."

Doctors Without Borders said three hospitals it supports in the eastern Damascus region reported receiving roughly 3,600 patients with "neurotoxic symptoms" over less than three hours on after the morning, when the attack in the eastern Ghouta area took place. Of those, 355 died. The Local Coordination Committees of Syria claimed that of the 1,338 victims, 1,000 were in Zamalka, among which 600 bodies were transferred to medical points in other towns and 400 remained at a Zamalka medical centre. According to a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, at least six medics died while treating the victims. The deadliness of the attack is believed to have been increased due to Syrians fleeing the regime bombardment by hiding in basements, where the heavier-than-air chemical agents sank to these lower-lying, poorly ventilated areas. Some of the victims died while sleeping.

The day after the alleged chemical attacks, 22 August, the Syrian army bombarded the Ghouta area.

Timing

The BBC News interpreted darkness and prayer calls in videos to be consistent with a pre-dawn timing of the attacks. (There are five daily prayers in Islam, including a dawn prayer, a sunset prayer, and a nighttime prayer.) BBC News considered it significant that the "three main Facebook pages of Syrian opposition groups" reported "fierce clashes between FSA rebels and government forces, as well as shelling by government forces" at 01:15 local time (UTC+3) on 21 August 2013 in the eastern Ghouta areas that were later claimed to have been attacked with chemical weapons.

Abu Sakhr, a paramedic interviewed by the VDC, estimated chemical weapons to have first been delivered by mortars at about 02:00. Another interviewee, Maher, said that Ein Tarma had been hit by chemical weapons before 02:30.

BBC News stated that three Syrian opposition Facebook pages reported the first claims of chemical weapons use within a few minutes of one another. At 02:45 UTC+3, the Ein Tarma Co-ordination Committee stated that "a number of residents died in suffocation cases due to chemical shelling of the al-Zayniya area [in Ein Tarma]." At 02:47, the Sham News Network reported an "urgent" message that Zamalka had been attacked with chemical weapons shells. At 02:55, the LCC made "a similar report." The Los Angeles Times timed the attacks at "about" 03:00.

Motivation

There has been some debate about the motivation for the attacks. According to military experts, both sides are locked in a political and military stalemate, and the opposition cannot win without western military intervention or arming them.

Government attack

Some have questioned the motive and timing behind the alleged Syrian government involvement in the Ghouta attacks, since the hotel in which the team of United Nations chemical weapons inspectors were staying was just a few miles from the attack. However, the agreement the Syrian government reached with UN inspectors limited their mandate to three specific sites to establish if a chemical attack took place, but not who was responsible, he might simply have launched the attack in an area designated as off-limits.

The French newspaper Le Monde reported in the months before the Ghouta attacks that its journalists embedded among opposition fighters had personally witnessed several chemical attacks on a smaller scale by the Syrian Army against rebel positions. Der Spiegel reported a suspicion by a gas expert that minimal use of chemical weapons was seen by the Assad regime as the best way get the West used to its deployment, triggering an ongoing international dispute over whether nerve gas was being used at all. Saying that at some point, "the commotion over the use of chemical weapons per se" would "have dissipated.". Former US intelligence officer Joseph Holliday wrote in a study that "Assad has been extremely calculating with the use of force", "introducing chemical weapons gradually."

A CNN reporter pointed to the fact that government forces did not appear to be in imminent danger of being overrun by opposition in the areas in question, in which a stalemate had set. He questioned why the army would risk such an action that could cause international intervention. The reporter also questioned if the Army would use sarin gas just a few kilometers from the center of Damascus on what was a windy day. However, the day of the attack was the one day that week when the wind blew from government-held central Damascus towards the rebel-held eastern suburbs. While a Huffington Post reporter pointed to the fact that the effected area was with strong opposition leanings, and is a major supply route to the front lines in the fighting in east Damascus. Assad's forces in both Mt Qassioun and in the Mezzeh airport have this area very zeroed in for rocket (typically Grads) and artillery strikes.

Several reporters also pointed to the timing of a purported assassination attempt against Assad earlier in August, suggesting the attack on the rebel enclaves came as a reprisal for the assassination attempt. A former Syrian intelligence officer claimed the attack came due to "internal reasons", to holding the "thinned-out front around Damascus" and "strengthening the morale of the fanatics in their ranks", following weeks of rebel attacks on Assad's home province of Latakia.

A reporter for The Daily Telegraph also pointed to the questionable timing given government forces had recently beaten back opposition in some areas around Damascus and recaptured territory. "Using chemical weapons might make sense when he is losing, but why launch gas attacks when he is winning anyway?" The reporter also questioned why would the attacks happen just three days after the inspectors arrived in Syria. Der Spiegel questioned this analysis, arguing that Assad's forces have been losing ground for several months and may have been motivated to use chemical weapons to forestall rebel advances in the Damascus suburbs.

Columnist and former IDF soldier Jeffrey Goldberg argued that Assad would use chemical weapons because nobody "will do a damn thing to stop him." Syrian human rights lawyer Razan Zaitouneh also argued that the Assad government would launch a chemical attack because "it knows that the international community would not do anything about it, like it did nothing about all the previous crimes." Israeli reporter Ron Ben-Yishai stated that the motive to use chemical weapons could be the "army's inability to seize the rebel's stronghold in Damascus' eastern neighbourhoods," or fear of rebel encroachment into Damascus with tacit civilian support, an argument backed by declassified intelligence reports from the United States.

Rebel attack

Russian president Vladimir Putin said that the use of chemical weapons was a rebel provocation performed to trigger a foreign-led strike. Russian sources suggest also that rebels are planning another chemical attack against Israel to draw it into the war against Assad.

A number of US commentators have suggested that the attacks might have been a "false flag" operation designed to give western powers an excuse to intervene. These include former Congressman Ron Paul, his son Senator Rand Paul, and Pat Buchanan.

Some experts have considered it plausible that rebels staged the attack "in a callous and calculated attempt to draw the West into the war." One expert cites the following as circumstantial evidence: "The 'rebels' are known to have acquired stocks of sarin gas. They used a chemical weapons compound in a home-made missile attack on a military outpost at Khan Al-Assal in March this year that killed dozens of soldiers and civilians. In May, Carla del Ponte, a member of the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria, said that investigators had evidence that the 'rebels' had used sarin gas. Also in May, Turkish police seized sarin gas ... from apartments where rebel Al-Nusra Front members were living in Adana and Mersin. Early in June, the Syrian military seized two barrels of sarin gas from a 'rebel' hideout in Hama."

Western intelligence agencies have dismissed the possibility of rebel responsibility for the alleged attack on the basis that there is no evidence that rebels are capable of staging an attack of its alleged scale.

Evidence

Symptoms

Doctors Without Borders who were operating three hospitals in the eastern Damascus region, which received roughly 3,600 patients over less than three hours on after the attack, reported seeing "large number of patients arriving with symptoms including convulsions, excessive saliva, pinpoint pupils, blurred vision and respiratory distress." Symptoms reported by Ghouta residents and doctors to Human Rights Watch included "suffocation, muscle spasms and frothing at the mouth."

Witness statements to The Guardian about symptoms included "people who were sleeping in their homes [who] died in their beds," headaches and nausea, "foam coming out of [victims'] mouths and noses," a "smell something like vinegar and rotten eggs," suffocation, "bodies [that] were turning blue," a "smell like cooking gas" and redness and itching of the eyes. Richard Spencer of The Telegraph summarised witness statements, stating, "The poison ... may have killed hundreds, but it has left twitching, fainting, confused but compelling survivors."

On 22 August, the Center for Documentation of Violations in Syria published numerous testimonies. It summarised doctors' and paramedics' descriptions of the symptoms as "vomiting, foamy salivation, severe agitation, [pinpoint] pupils, redness of the eyes, dyspnea, neurological convulsions, respiratory and heart failure, blood out of the nose and mouth and, in some cases, hallucinations and memory loss".

Analysis of symptoms

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior associate for the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said what the group of doctors in Syria is reporting "is what a textbook would list to say nerve-agent poison." Symptoms like incredibly small pupils help say it is not agents like mustard gas or chlorine gas, but instead more like sarin, soman, VX and taubun.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Director of Operations Bart Janssens stated that MSF "can neither scientifically confirm the cause of these symptoms nor establish who is responsible for the attack. However, the reported symptoms of the patients, in addition to the epidemiological pattern of the events – characterised by the massive influx of patients in a short period of time, the origin of the patients, and the contamination of medical and first aid workers – strongly indicate mass exposure to a neurotoxic agent."

Gwyn Winfield, editorial director at the magazine CBRNe World, which reports on chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or explosives use, analyzed the videos and wrote on the magazine's site: "Clearly respiratory distress, some nerve spasms and a half-hearted washdown (involving water and bare hands?), but it could equally be a riot control agent as a (chemical warfare agent)."

Delivery method

Abu Omar of the Free Syrian Army stated to The Guardian that the rockets involved in the attack were unusual because "you could hear the sound of the rocket in the air but you could not hear any sound of explosion" and no obvious damage to buildings occurred. Human Rights Watch's witnesses reported "symptoms and delivery methods consistent with the use of chemical nerve agents." Activists and local residents contacted by The Guardian said that "the remains of 20 rockets [thought to have been carrying neurotoxic gas were] found in the affected areas. Many [remained] mostly intact, suggesting that they did not detonate on impact and potentially dispersed gas before hitting the ground."

Some analysts speculated on 21 August that a stockpile of chemical agents may have been hit by shelling, whether controlled by the opposition or the government. Richard Guthrie, a chemical weapons specialist formerly with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in Sweden, told New Scientist that "the day of the attack was the one day that week when the wind blew from government-held central Damascus towards the rebel-held eastern suburbs." New Scientist also noted that there appeared to be no government troop casualties from the attack.

CNN noted that some opposition activists claimed the use of "Agent 15," also known as BZ, in the attacks, for which some experts expressed doubt the Syrian government possesses, and the symptoms caused by said chemical are very different from the symptoms reported in this attack.

According to CBS News, chemical and biological weapons experts have been relatively consistent in their analysis, saying only a military force with access to and knowledge of missile delivery systems and the sarin gas suspected in Ghouta could have carried out an attack capable of killing hundreds of people. Additionally British and U.S. officials stated that there is no credible evidence that any opposition group to conduct a chemical weapons attack on this scale.

According to Human Rights Watch report, two types of projectiles were used in the Chemical attacks. The first was a 330mm rocket "that appears to have a warhead designed to be loaded with and deliver a large payload of liquid chemical agent". The second was a Soviet-produced 140mm rocket that can deliver three possible warheads, one of them specifically designed to carry 2.2kg of sarin. Adding that "Human Rights Watch and arms experts monitoring the use of weapons in Syria have not documented Syrian opposition forces to be in the possession of the 140mm and 330mm rockets used in the attack or their associated launchers."

The Turkish government's Anadolu Agency published an unconfirmed reported on 30 August, pointing to the Syrian 155th Missile Brigade in Kufeyte and the 4th Armored Division on Qasyoun Mountain, as the perpetrators of the two attacks. It said the attack had involved 15-20 missiles with chemical warheads at around 2.45 am on 21 August, targeting residential areas between Duma-Harasta and Zamalka in East and West Ghouta. It specified that the 155th Missile Brigade had used FROG-7/Luna and/or M600 missiles fired from Kufeyte, while other rockets with a 15-to-70-kilometer range were fired by the 4th Armored Division from Qasyoun. The agency did not explain its source.

Video

Murad Abu Bilal, Khaled Naddaf and other VDC and local coordination committee (LCC) media staff went to Zamalka to film and obtain other documentary evidence of the attacks immediately after they were known, early on 21 August. Almost all the journalists died from inhalation of the neurotoxins apart from Murad Abu Bilal, who was the only Zamalka LCC media member to survive. The videos were published on YouTube, attracting world-wide media attention.

Experts who have analysed the first video said it shows the strongest evidence yet consistent with the use of a lethal toxic agent. Visible symptoms reportedly included rolling eyes, foaming at the mouth, and tremors. There was at least one image of a child suffering miosis, the pin-point pupil effect associated with the nerve agent Sarin, a powerful neurotoxin reportedly used before in Syria. Ralph Trapp, a former scientist at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said the footage showed what a chemical weapons attack on a civilian area would look like, and went on to note "This is one of the first videos I've seen from Syria where the numbers start to make sense. If you have a gas attack you would expect large numbers of people, children and adults, to be affected, particularly if it's in a built-up area."

Some experts, among them Jean Pascal Zanders, initially stated that evidence that sarin was used, as claimed by pro-rebel sources, was still lacking and highlighted the lack of second-hand contaminations typically associated with use of weapons-grade nerve agents: "I remain sceptical that it was a nerve agent like sarin. I would have expected to see more convulsions," he said. "The other thing that seems inconsistent with sarin is that, given the footage of first responders treating victims without proper protective equipment, you would expect to see considerable secondary casualties from contamination – which does not appear to be evident." However, after Zanders saw footage imminently after the attack, he changed his mind, saying: "The video footage and pictures this time are of a far better quality. You can clearly see the typical signs of asphyxiation, including a pinkish blueish tinge to the skin colour. There is one image of an adult woman where you can see the tell-tale blackish mark around her mouth, all of which suggests death from asphyxiation."

According to a report by The Daily Telegraph, "videos uploaded to YouTube by activists showed rows of motionless bodies and medics attending to patients apparently in the grip of seizures. In one piece of footage, a young boy appeared to be foaming at the mouth while convulsing."

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commander of British Chemical and Biological counterterrorism forces, told BBC that the images were very similar to previous incidents he had witnessed, although he could not verify the footage.

Intelligence

Two specific pieces of intelligence-based evidence were noted by the media. One was a phone call allegedly between Syrian officials which Israel's Unit 8200 was said to have intercepted and passed to the US. The other was a phone call which the German Bundesnachrichtendienst said it had intercepted, between a high-ranking representative of Hezbollah and the Iranian embassy. The Hizbollah representative said that poison gas had been used and that Mr Assad's order to attack with chemical weapons had been a big mistake, adding that Assad "lost his nerve".

U.S. secretary of state John Kerry stated on 4 September that hair samples and blood samples from the attack had tested positive for sarin. At a British laboratory, soil and cloth samples from the attack tested positive for sarin and sarin's immediate breakdown product.

Other

Yahya Ababneh, a Jordanian freelance reporter working for the news website Mint Press News, claimed in late August 2013 to have interviewed both local residents and rebels, with interviewees stated that rebels had themselves accidentally released the chemical agents, of Saudi origin, due to being unaware of the nature of the weapons they were handling. Mint Press News was described in 2012 as a 'Shia advocacy site' on PJ Media, while online news site MinnPost noted in 2012 that Mint Press News had unnamed investors, describing this as "unfortunate for a journalism operation fighting alongside people seeking transparency".

UN investigation

See also: Khan al-Assal chemical attack § UN Investigations

Two days before the attack, a U.N. team arrived in Damascus with permission, from the Syrian government, to investigate earlier alleged chemical weapons use. On the day of the attack U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed "the need to investigate [as] soon as possible," hoping for consent from the Syrian government. The next day U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay urged government and opposition forces to allow investigation, and Ban requested the government provide immediate access. On Friday 23 the Syrian military continued to shell Ghouta - U.N inspectors were denied access for a second day to the affected areas of the capital. On 25 August the government agreed to cease hostilities with the presence of U.N. inspectors.

On 26 August he U.N. team visited clinics and makeshift field hospitals in the Ghouta districts, collected samples and conducted interviews with witnesses, survivors and doctors. The team came under sniper fire and was forced to replace their vehicle before continuing their investigation four hours later, leading the U.N. Secretary register a "strong complaint" to government and opposition forces. After returning inspectors spoke with 20 victims of the attacks, took blood and hair samples, soil samples, and samples from domestic animals.

A doctor told The Guardian that on 26 August, the Syrian regime ordered inspectors to leave the site of Mua'adamiyat al-Sham 90 minutes after their arrival, and prevented them from reaching six suspected attack sites. According to the doctor, regime security forces told U.N. inspectors they could not guarantee their safety.

With the investigation still ongoing, special UN envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi said on 28 August that evidence suggests "some kind of substance" was used to kill hundreds of people in Ghouta. He did not say what evidence he was referring to, but he said it did not come from Western intelligence reports and he noted that inspectors gathered samples for analysis two days prior.

United States officials told the The Wall Street Journal that White House "became convinced" that the Syrian government was trying to hide the evidence of chemical weapons use by shelling the sites and delaying their inspection.

Intelligence reports

Intelligence agencies in the United Kingdom, Israel, United States, France, Turkey, and Germany concluded that the Syrian government was most likely responsible for the attacks. Intelligence reports that assessed the government had orchestrated the attack presented suggestions as to why it might have used chemical weapons, focusing on the idea that the Syrian military was concerned about opposition strength in the Damascus suburbs and frustrated with its difficulty in dislodging rebel fighters. The French intelligence included satellite imagery showing the attacks coming from government-controlled areas to the east and west of Damascus and targeting rebel-held zones and observed that 'Assad's forces had since bombed the areas to wipe out evidence'. In addition to the intelligence agency's conclusions, the NGO Human Rights Watch also concluded that the evidence strongly suggests the Syrian government carried out the attack.

Intelligence agencies assesses that Assad Government has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year. British put that number at least 14 occasions from 2012, adding that "A clear pattern of regime use has therefore been established". U.S. assess that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons "primarily to gain the upper hand or break a stalemate in areas where it has struggled to seize and hold strategically valuable territory."

Intelligence agencies agree that video evidence is consistent with the use of a nerve agent, such as sarin. And U.S. laboratory tests showed traces of sarin, in blood and hair samples collected from emergency workers who responded to the Aug. 21 attacks. Britain put the number of fatalities at least 350. France confirmed 281 fatalities based according to video footage they studied, acknowledging up to 1,500 total. While American preliminary assessment determined that 1,429 people were killed, including at least 426 children.

The Russian and Syrian governments both accused the Syrian opposition of responsibility for the attacks. According to the The Guardian, as of 3 September neither had "publicly produced any evidence to support their claims."

The American and European intelligence reports were criticized by the Syrian government and its allies, especially the Russian Federation.

UK intelligence report

A report on the attacks by the UK's Joint Intelligence Committee was published on 29 August prior to a vote on intervention by the House of Commons. The report said it was "highly likely" that the attacks had been carried out by the Syrian government, resting in part on the firm view that the Syrian opposition was not capable of carrying out a chemical weapons attack on this scale, and on the JIC's view that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war on a small scale on 14 previous occasions. Analysis of the Ghouta attacks themselves was based largely on reviewing video footage and publicly available witness evidence. The report conceded problems with motivation for the attacks, saying there was "no obvious political or military trigger for regime use of CW on an apparently larger scale now". The report was met with substantial skepticism in the British media, with the Daily Mail explicitly comparing it with the "dodgy dossier" the UK government had published in 2003 prior to the Iraq War. A vote in the House of Commons to approve UK participation in military action against Syria was narrowly rejected, in part because of some MPs' view that the case for Syrian government culpability was not sufficiently strong to justify approving action. Prime Minister David Cameron himself had been forced to concede that "In the end there is no 100 percent certainty about who is responsible." The loss of the vote made Cameron the first British prime minister in over 150 years to be prevented from going to war by Parliament.

US intelligence reports

A US "Government Assessment" of the Ghouta attacks was published by the White House on 30 August, with a longer classified version made available to members of Congress. The United States' intelligence assessment on the attacks gave a possible motive for the attack based on intercepted communications, saying that it "was a desperate effort to push back rebels from several areas in the capital’s densely packed eastern suburbs – and also suggests that the high civilian death toll surprised and panicked senior Syrian officials, who called off the attack and then tried to cover it up."

A number of members of Congress expressed skepticism about the US intelligence reports, including Senator Tom Harkin in a statement on 1 September ("I have just attended a classified Congressional briefing on Syria that quite frankly raised more questions than it answered. I found the evidence presented by Administration officials to be circumstantial.") and Republican Representative Michael C. Burgess ("I saw the classified documents yesterday. They were pretty thin"). On 6 September Democratic Party Representative Alan Grayson also criticised the US report, including the classified one, which he described as 12 pages long. Grayson said the unclassified summary relied on "intercepted telephone calls, 'social media' postings and the like, but not one of these is actually quoted or attached — not even clips from YouTube. (As to whether the classified summary is the same, I couldn’t possibly comment, but again, draw your own conclusion.)" Grayson cited as a specific example the intercept of a phone call between the Syrian 155th Brigade and the Syrian ministry of defence, the transcript of which was not available to members of Congress, leaving him unable to judge whether a report in The Daily Caller that the implications of the call had been misrepresented in the report were accurate or not.

The US government position was criticized on 6 September by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a group of retired intelligence professionals including Ray McGovern and Thomas Andrews Drake which had in 2003 criticized US intelligence on the Iraq war. VIPS released a memorandum stating that "some of our former co-workers are telling us, categorically, that contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21", and described "a strong circumstantial case that the August 21 chemical incident was a pre-planned provocation by the Syrian opposition and its Saudi and Turkish supporters". The memorandum also said that "CIA officers working on the Syria issue ... tell us that CIA Director John Brennan is perpetrating a pre-Iraq-War-type fraud on members of Congress, the media, the public..." Unnamed active intelligence officials had previously told the Associated Press that the intelligence was "not a slam dunk" and that the US report did not discuss the possibilities of a rogue element in the Syrian military executing the attack, or of the attack being staged by rebels: "[Some] U.S. intelligence officials ... have even talked about the possibility that rebels could have carried out the attack in a callous and calculated attempt to draw the West into the war."

On 9 September journalist Gareth Porter wrote for Inter Press Service (IPS) that "Former intelligence officials told IPS that that the paper does not represent a genuine intelligence community assessment but rather one reflecting a predominantly Obama administration influence." One former official said that the description as a 'Government Assessment' rather than an 'intelligence assessment' "means that this is not an intelligence community document"; another said that the White House had apparently "decided on a position and cherry-picked the intelligence to fit it". Porter pointed out that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence normally releases intelligence reports, and that Porter's attempts to clarify with the Office why this report had been released by the White House Press Secretary were met with stonewalling.

French intelligence report

On 2 September the French government published a 9-page report blaming the Syrian government for the Ghouta attacks. An unnamed French government official told Fox News that the analysis was carried out by the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) and Direction du renseignement militaire (DRM), and "was based on satellite imagery, video images, and on-the-ground sources — plus samples collected from the alleged chemical attacks in April." Analysis of samples collected from two separate April attacks had confirmed the use of sarin. The report also described the Syrian chemical weapons programme and command structure.

German intelligence

According to the Bild newspaper, in early September German intelligence indicated that elements of the Assad regime, and not renegade rebel groups, were responsible for the attack in the suburb of Ghouta. According to Bild, "high-level national security sources" said that Bashar al-Assad had not ordered the chemical weapons attack and had rejected their use when his military commanders broached the possibility, and that other elements of the Assad regime were responsible for the attack. German newspaper Der Spiegel reported on 4 September that BND leader Gerhald Schindler told them that based on BND evidence Germany now shared the US, Britain and France's view that the attacks were carried out by Assad. However, they also said the attack may have been an accident. The German investigation team also speculated that there was an overdose in chemical weapons used.

Legal status

Attacks

Human Rights Watch stated that "Syria is not among the 189 countries that are party to the 1993 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling, and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction (Chemical Weapons Convention). Any use of chemical weapons is unconscionable and contradicts the standards set by the Chemical Weapons Convention."

International Criminal Court referral

Human Rights Watch stated that the UN Security Council should refer the Syria situation to the International Criminal Court (ICC) "to ensure accountability for all war crimes and crimes against humanity." Amnesty International also said that the Syria situation should be referred to the ICC because "Long term, the best way for the United States to signal its abhorrence for war crimes and crimes against humanity and to promote justice in Syria, would be to reaffirm its support for the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court." However as the amendment to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court explicitly making it a war crime to use chemical weapons in an internal conflict has not been ratified by any major state nor Syria, the legal situation is complex and reliant on being a part of a wider war crime.

Reactions

Domestic

Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi was quoted by the official state news agency, Syrian Arab News Agency, as saying that "the government did not and would not use such weapons – in the case they did not even exist. Everything that has been said is absurd, primitive, illogical and fabricated. What we say is what we mean: there is no use of such things (chemical weapons) at all, at least not by the Syrian army or the Syrian state, and it's easy to prove and it is not that complicated." SANA called the reports of chemical attacks as "untrue and designed to derail the ongoing UN inquiry." A Syrian military official appeared on state television denouncing the reports as "a desperate opposition attempt to make up for rebel defeats on the ground." Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad declared it a tactic by the rebels to turn around the civil war which he said "they were losing" and that, though the government had admitted to having stocks of chemical weapons, stated they would never be used "inside Syria". Democratic Union Party leader Salih Muslim said he doubted that the Syrian government carried out the chemical attack.

The National Coalition called the attack a "coup de grace that kills all hopes for a political solution in Syria." The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said of the incident that the Syrian armed forces have committed the "most violent military assault" since the beginning of the uprising. Their statement in regards to the incident read that "we assure the world that silence and inaction in the face of such gross and large-scale war crimes, committed in this instance by the Syrian regime, will only embolden the criminals to continue in this path. The international community is thus complicit in these crimes because of its polarisation, silence and inability to work on a settlement that would lead to the end of the daily bloodshed in Syria."

International

Main article: International reactions to the 2013 Ghouta attacks

The international community condemned the attacks. United States President Barack Obama said the U.S. military should strike targets in Syria to retaliate for the government's purported use of chemical weapons, a proposal possibly supported by French President François Hollande, but opposed by the Syrian government's closest allies, Russia and Iran. The Arab League stated it would support military action against Syria in the event of U.N. support, though members Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Tunisia and Algeria oppose intervention.

At the end of August the UK's House of Commons voted against military intervention in Syria. In early September the US Congress began debating a proposed Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against the Government of Syria to Respond to Use of Chemical Weapons (S.J.Res 21).

In contrast to the positions of their governments, polls in early September indicated that most people in the U.S., U.K. and France opposed military intervention in Syria. One poll indicated that 50% of Americans could support military intervention with cruise missiles only, "meant to destroy military units and infrastructure that have been used to carry out chemical attacks." In contrast to their government, most Russians supported neither side in the conflict, with less than 10% saying they supported Assad.

See also

• Chemical attack on Behbahan battalion – a 1986 incident during the Iran–Iraq War
• List of massacres during the Syrian civil war
• Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway – a 1995 terrorist incident
• Syria and weapons of mass destruction