Syria govt behind sarin gas attack in April: UN probe

In the first UN report to officially blame Damascus, the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Syria said it had gathered an “extensive body of information” showing the Syrian airforce was behind the horrific sarin gas attack on April 4.

“All evidence available leads the Commission to conclude that there are reasonable grounds to believe Syrian forces dropped an aerial bomb dispersing sarin in Khan Sheikhun,” the report said. 

At least 83 people, a third of them children, were killed and nearly 300 wounded in the attack on Khan Sheikhun, a town in the opposition-held northern province of Idlib, it said. Other sources have given a death toll of at least 87.

Syria’s government has denied involvement and claims it no longer possesses chemical weapons after a 2013 agreement under which it pledged to surrender its chemical arsenal. 

A fact-finding mission by the UN’s chemical watchdog, the OPCW, concluded earlier this year that sarin gas was used in the attack, but did not assign blame. 

A joint UN-OPCW panel is currently working to determine whether Syrian government forces were behind the attack. But Wednesday’s report is the first from the UN to officially lay blame for the attack on Damascus. The report also found that the Syrian government was responsible for at least 23 other chemical attacks in the war-ravaged country since March 2013.