U.N. believes chemical weapons used in Syria

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - United Nations investigators said on Tuesday they had "reasonable grounds" to believe that limited amounts of chemical weapons had been used in Syria, while France said the nerve agent sarin had been deployed on several occasions.

In their latest report, human rights investigators said they had received allegations that Syrian government forces and rebels had used the banned weapons, but most testimony related to their use by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

Increasing reports from the battlefield of the use of chemical weapons have sounded alarm bells in the West, lending urgency to a new diplomatic push to end the war. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said last week that the use of chemical weapons was unacceptable.

France said it was certain that sarin had been used in Syria on several occasions following tests it has carried out on samples recovered from the country.

"These tests show the presence of sarin in various samples in our possession," Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in Paris, adding that those guilty of using the weapons should not go unpunished. He did not say who had used the gas.

In Syria, Qusair came under renewed missile attack as fighting there dragged into its third week, prompting calls for humanitarian access to offer some relief to the thousands trapped in the city under siege by government forces.

Those hoping to save themselves were faced with the agonizing choice of digging holes in the ground to escape the bombing or embarking on a perilous cross-country trek to neighboring Lebanon.

The U.N. commission said it examined four reported toxic attacks in Syria in March and April but could not determine which side was behind them.

"There are reasonable grounds to believe that limited quantities of toxic chemicals were used. It has not been possible, on the evidence available, to determine the precise chemical agents used, their delivery systems or the perpetrator," Paulo Pinheiro, who chairs the U.N. commission of inquiry, told a news conference in Geneva.

"The witnesses that we have interviewed include victims, refugees who fled some areas, and medical staff," Pinheiro said, declining to be more specific for reasons of confidentiality.

MUTUAL ACCUSATIONS

Assad's government and its opponents have accused each other of using chemical weapons.

Syria's ambassador, Faysal Khabbaz Hamoui, in a debate at the U.N. Human Rights Council on Tuesday, questioned the "neutrality and professionalism" of the panel.

Russian Ambassador Alexey Borodavkin called for U.N. experts to be sent to Khan al-Assal in the northern Aleppo province, where an alleged chemical weapons strike took place on March 19, one of the four cited by the inquiry.

A team of U.N. inspectors has so far been denied access to Syria and has been unable to establish whether chemical weapons have been used.

The U.N. rights team of more than 20 investigators conducted 430 interviews from January 15 to May 15 among refugees in neighboring countries and by Skype with people still in Syria.

But findings remained inconclusive and it was vital that U.N. experts be allowed to collect samples from victims and the sites of alleged attacks, the rights investigators said.

"The war in Syria is a major catastrophe of our time," Pinheiro told the Geneva forum. "Syria is in free-fall. Brutality has become a tactic of war," he said.

At least 17 massacres were committed in the period under review, making a total of 30 since September, the report said.

Syrian leaders must be held accountable for directing a policy that includes besieging and bombing cities and executing civilians, the independent investigators said.

"The documented violations are consistent and widespread, evidence of a concerted policy implemented by the leaders of Syria's military and government," they said in their fifth report on the 26-month-old war that has killed more than 80,000.

Government forces and allied militia have committed war crimes including murder, torture and rape, the report said.

For the past two weeks, Syrian government forces have laid siege to the border town of Qusair, where aid agencies say hundreds of wounded and other civilians are trapped in dire conditions.

HORRENDOUS SCENES

Syria's envoy Khabbaz Hamoui said the report was selective.

"The commission referred only casually to examples of the crimes perpetrated by the 'takfiri' (extremist) groups including extrajudicial executions, slaying of captives, tearing open the bodies of victims and eating out their guts. Some horrendous scenes that shocked the whole world," he told the talks.

As Syrian government forces try to grind down the rebels in Qusair, trapped civilians have had to choose between sheltering from the bombs or risking a 100 km (60 mile) hike to safety.

"Qusair itself is described as a ghost town, heavily damaged and filled with the sound of bombs. People are hiding in bunkers or, even worse, in holes that they've dug," U.N. refugee agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told a briefing in Geneva.

"One woman told us that she spent, with her children, one week inside a hole that was dug into the ground."

Qusair, near the Lebanese border, was home to about 30,000 people before the war. It is now the latest flashpoint, a strategic prize that both sides need to secure supply routes.

With the fighting there dragging into its third week, Syrian forces fired ground missiles and launched a series of air raids on the town on Tuesday, activists said.

Earlier quick advances made by forces loyal to Assad and the allied Hezbollah militia have slowed as they tried to seize the northern quarter of the town.

Opposition leaders called for the creation of a humanitarian corridor to allow people from Qusair to flee to Lebanon.

"We have in Qusair more than 1,000 wounded, and 400 of them are in critical condition. Some of them have been bleeding for days," said George Sabra, acting head of the opposition National Coalition.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said the Syrian government had said it was willing to grant the agency access to Qusair once military operations there were ended.

(Writing by Giles Elgood; editing by David Stamp)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/u-n-believes-chemical-weapons-used-syria-161452926.html

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