Party cups as gas masks: Idlib civilians prepare for battle

A boy tries on an improvised gas mask in Idlib, Syria September 3, 2018. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

IDLIB, Syria (Reuters) – Hudhayfa al-Shahad strapped a colorful paper cup filled with cotton and charcoal to a child’s face and tightened a plastic bag around his head: an improvised gas mask if chemicals once again fall on Syria’s Idlib.

Civilians in Syria’s last major stronghold of active opposition to President Bashar al-Assad’s rule are preparing food and digging shelters ahead of an expected army offensive.

They are also putting their faith in neighboring Turkey’s diplomacy to spare them from military action, which could become a humanitarian disaster.

“We are preparing what little we can: small primitive masks we can place on our children’s mouths in case we are hit with chemicals,” 20-year-old Shahad told Reuters from his village south of Idlib city, where he shares a house with his pregnant wife, three children and around 15 other people.

His brother, 35-year-old construction worker Ahmed Abdulkarim al-Shahad, shows off the cavernous space under a cool, vine-covered courtyard the family has been digging and sheltering in from bombardment since 2012.

“Military preparations as we have seen are in full swing … We as civilians have started preparing the caves,” he said, showing glass bottles of pickled vegetables shelved on the damp cave walls.

Around 3 million people live in the rebel stronghold in northwest Syria, which comprises most of Idlib province and adjacent small parts of Latakia, Hama and Aleppo provinces.

About half of them fled fighting or were transferred there by the government under surrender deals from other parts of Syria as Assad has steadily taken back territory from rebels.

In April last year, a government warplane dropped sarin on Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib, killing more than 80 civilians, the U.N. Commission of Inquiry has said. It also said Syrian forces have used chemical weapons, including chlorine, more than two dozen times during the war.

Damascus and its ally Russia both deny these charges and say they do not engage in chemical warfare. Idlib residents are fearful and Washington has warned Assad against using chemical weapons in any offensive, promising a response if he does so.

Children hold plastic bags with a paper cup in them, in Idlib, Syria September 3, 2018. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

Children hold plastic bags with a paper cup in them, in Idlib, Syria September 3, 2018. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

PROTECTION

Russia, Assad’s ally, resumed air strikes against insurgents in Idlib on Tuesday following weeks of bombardment and shelling by pro-Syrian government forces in an apparent prelude to a full-scale offensive against the last major rebel enclave.

But Turkey has said it hopes a summit with Iranian and Russian leaders in Tehran on Friday will avert an offensive.

And some people Reuters spoke to in Idlib suspected an offensive may be avoided.

“I do not believe there will be an attack on Idlib. It’s all a media war,” said 50-year-old former construction worker Jaafar Abu Ahmad from a rural area near Ma’arat al-Nuaman town. “The great world powers have pre-agreed on us and divided the land.”

Nevertheless, seven years of grinding war have taught Ahmad to be prepared. His family is currently expanding a damp dugout they have been digging and sheltering in from strikes for the past five years, stocking it with food.

“We have been digging in the earth for two months non-stop, me, my wife and children,” he said. “This cave is now our protection. We cleaned it recently after it had been neglected for a long time.”

Children walk in a makeshift shelter in an underground cave in Idlib, Syria September 3, 2018. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

Children walk in a makeshift shelter in an underground cave in Idlib, Syria September 3, 2018. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

With shelling, air strikes and rhetoric about an impending offensive increasing, a number of local councils across Idlib have come together and asked Turkey for protection.

“For us in the liberated areas our only guarantor in negotiations is our Turkish brothers,” said Ahmad Shtaam al-Rashu, the 48-year-old head of Ma’shureen village’s local council.

Turkey has erected observation posts along the frontlines between rebels and government forces, and Rashu said Turkey had told them this was a sign of its commitment to protect the people of Idlib.

Idlib is often described as the “last refuge” for rebels and internally displaced civilians, and any offensive threatens new displacement and human misery.

“As for escaping toward the (Turkish) border, I don’t believe we will move from our houses. The bombardment will get us. There is no place left after Idlib,” said Ahmed al-Shahad.

“We will fight to the last man, we no longer have any option.”

(Reporting by Khalil Ashawi in Syria; Writing by Lisa Barrington in Beirut; Editing by Gareth Jones)

As U.S. response looms, Russia and Syria urge inspection of attack site

A man is washed following alleged chemical weapons attack, in what is said to be Douma, Syria in this still image from video obtained by Reuters on April 8, 2018. White Helmets/Reuters TV via REUTERS

By Ellen Francis and Jack Stubbs

BEIRUT/MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Bashar al-Assad’s government has invited international inspectors to send a team to Syria to investigate an alleged chemical attack in the town of Douma in a move apparently aimed at averting possible Western military action over the incident.

At least 60 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured in Saturday’s the suspected attack on Douma, then still occupied by rebel forces, according to a Syrian relief group.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday warned of a quick, forceful response once responsibility was established, although he appeared to have little doubt it was the work of Assad’s Russian-backed forces.

The Syrian government and Russia said there was no evidence that a gas attack had taken place and the claim was bogus.

The incident has thrust Syria’s seven-year-old conflict back to the forefront of international concern. Trump will miss a Latin American summit in Peru this week in order to focus on the crisis, the White House said.

Adding to the volatile situation, Iran, Assad’s main ally along with Russia, threatened to respond to an air strike on a Syrian military base on Monday that Tehran, Damascus and Moscow have blamed on Israel.

Meanwhile on the ground, thousands of militants and their families arrived in rebel-held northwestern Syria after surrendering Douma to government forces. The evacuation deal restores Assad’s control over the entire eastern Ghouta – formerly the biggest rebel bastion near Damascus.

The Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is already at work trying to establish what exactly took place in Douma.

But whether a team would try to get there was unclear. OPCW inspectors have been attacked on two previous missions to the sites of chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

“Syria is keen on cooperating with the OPCW to uncover the truth behind the allegations that some Western sides have been advertising to justify their aggressive intentions,” state news agency SANA said, quoting an official Foreign Ministry source.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Kremlin would submit a resolution to the U.N. Security Council proposing that the OPCW investigate the alleged attack.

MILITARY OPTIONS

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said there was no threat of the situation in Syria resulting in a military clash between Russia and the United States.

TASS news agency quoted Bogdanov as saying Russia and U.S. officials had “working contacts” over Syria and he believed common sense would prevail.

On Monday, Trump told a meeting of military leaders and national security advisers in Washington that he would take a decision that night or shortly after on a response, and that the United States had “a lot of options militarily” on Syria.

“But we can’t let atrocities like we all witnessed … we can’t let that happen in our world … especially when we’re able to because of the power of the United States, the power of our country, we’re able to stop it,” Trump said.

At the U.N. Security Council, the United States plans to call for a vote on Tuesday for a new inquiry into responsibility for the use of chemical weapons in Syria, diplomats said.

If the U.S. proposal is put to a vote, it is likely to be vetoed by Russia.

At a meeting on Monday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Washington would respond to the suspected weapons attack in Syria whether the Security Council acted or not.

“This is basically a diplomatic set-up,” said Richard Gowan, a U.N. expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“Russia will inevitably veto the U.S. resolution criticising Assad, and Washington will use this to justify military strikes,” he said. “A breakdown at the U.N. will also make it easier for France to justify strikes.”

France said on Tuesday it would respond if it was proven that Assad’s forces carried out the attack. Any riposte would most likely be in coordination with the United States, government aides said.

U.S. officials told Reuters that Washington was weighing a multinational military response. Washington bombed a Syrian government air base last year over a toxic gas attack.

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia accused the United States, France and Britain of stoking international tensions by engaging in a “confrontational policy against Russia and Syria”.

“Russia is being unpardonably threatened. The tone with which this is being done has gone beyond the threshold of what is acceptable, even during the Cold War.”

MORE CLARITY

Initial U.S. assessments have been unable to determine conclusively what materials were used in the attack and could not say with certainty that Assad’s forces were behind it.

Trump said, however, that Washington was “getting more clarity” on who was responsible.

A previous joint inquiry of the United Nations and the OPCW had found the Syrian government used the nerve agent sarin in an attack in April 2017, and had also several times used chlorine as a weapon. Damascus blamed Islamic State militants for mustard gas use.

The suspected chemical attack came at the end of one of the deadliest Syrian government offensives of the war, with an estimated 1,700 civilians killed in eastern Ghouta in air and artillery bombardments.

Despite the international revulsion over the chemical weapons attacks, the death toll from such incidents is in the dozens, a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of combatants and civilians killed since an uprising against Assad’s rule broke out in March 2011.

The deal over the rebel evacuation of Douma took effect on Sunday, hours after medical aid groups reported the suspected chemical attack

RIA news agency quoted Russia’s Defence Ministry as saying 3,600 militants and their families had left Douma over the past 24 hours. About 40,000 militants and their families are expected to leave, the pro-government Watan newspaper said.

Sixty-seven buses carrying hundreds of fighters, along with family members and other civilians who did not wish to come back under Assad’s rule, reached opposition areas near Aleppo on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

As part of the surrender deal, the Jaish al-Islam group that controlled the town released scores of people it had been holding.

Jaish al-Islam’s departure will bring to an end the opposition presence in eastern Ghouta, giving Assad’ his biggest battlefield victory since late 2016, when he took back Aleppo, and underlining his unassailable position in the war.

(Reporting by Jack Stubbs and Maria Kiselyova in Moscow, Tom Perry and Ellen Francis in Beirut, Steve Holland and Michelle Nichols in the United States, John Irish in Paris, Writing by Angus MacSwan; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

France says won’t accept Syria circumventing chemical weapons’ ban

A U.N. chemical weapons expert, wearing a gas mask, holds a plastic bag containing samples from one of the sites of an alleged chemical weapons attack in the Ain Tarma neighbourhood of Damascus, Syria August 29, 2013.

PARIS (Reuters) – France said on Friday it was “deeply concerned” that Syria’s government was flouting its pledges to stop using chemical weapons and Paris was working with its partners to shed light on recent suspected toxic gas attacks.

Senior U.S. officials said on Thursday that the Syrian government may be developing new types of chemical weapons, and U.S. President Donald Trump is prepared to consider further military action if necessary to deter chemical attacks.

Rescue workers and medical groups working in the rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta, near to Damascus, have accused government forces of using chlorine gas three times over the last month, including on Thursday morning.

French foreign ministry spokeswoman Agnes Von der Muhll said that reports from the OPCW, the global chemical weapons watchdog, indicated that Damascus had not met commitments made in 2013 to fully abandon its chemical stockpiles and was not conforming with international conventions banning their use.

“This gives rise to our deepest concern. France does not accept that the convention prohibiting chemical weapons be challenged,” von der Muhll told reporters in a daily online briefing.

President Bashar al-Assad’s government denies using chemical weapons, which it agreed to destroy in 2013 under an agreement brokered by Russia and the United States.

“We are actively working with our partners on this issue and on all reports of new chemical attacks in Syria,” von der Muhll said.

A deadly sarin attack on a rebel-held area in April 2017 prompted Trump to order a missile strike on the Shayrat air base, from which the Syrian operation is said to have been launched.

French President Emmanuel Macron has said that Paris could launch unilateral air strikes against targets in Syria if a new chemical attack took place, although he has since said he would coordinate any action with Trump.

(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Leigh Thomas)

Suspected Aleppo chlorine attack chokes dozens, rescue workers

A still image taken on September 7, 2016 from a video posted on social media said to be shot in Aleppo's Al Sukari on September 6, 2016, shows a boy breathing with an oxygen mask inside a hospital, after a suspected chlorine gas attack

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A suspected chlorine gas attack on an opposition-held neighborhood in the Syrian city of Aleppo caused dozens of cases of suffocation on Tuesday, rescue workers and a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Civil Defence, a rescue workers’ organization that operates in rebel-held areas, said government helicopters had dropped barrel bombs containing chlorine on the Sukari neighborhood in eastern Aleppo.

The Syrian government has denied previous accusations it used chemical weapons during the five-year-old civil war. The Syrian army could not be immediately reached for comment on the latest allegations.

The Civil Defence said on its Facebook page that 80 people had suffocated. It reported no deaths. It posted a video showing wheezing children doused in water using oxygen masks to breathe.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks Syrian violence using sources on the ground, said medical sources had reported 70 cases of suffocation.

A United Nations and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons inquiry seen by Reuters last month found that Syrian government forces were responsible for two toxic gas attacks in 2014 and 2015 involving chlorine.

A still image taken on September 7, 2016 from a video posted on social media said to be shot in Aleppo's Al Sukari on September 6, 2016, shows a civil defense member making his way through debris, after a suspected chlorine gas attack,

A still image taken on September 7, 2016 from a video posted on social media said to be shot in Aleppo’s Al Sukari on September 6, 2016, shows a civil defense member making his way through debris, after a suspected chlorine gas attack, Syria. Social Media via Reuters TV

The Civil Defence accused the government of two other suspected chlorine gas attacks in August . The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria said it was investigating an August incident.

“Unimaginable crimes are occurring in Aleppo … pro-government aerial bombardments cause mass civilian casualties,” Commission Chairman Paulo Pinheiro told reporters in Geneva. “In government-held areas, indiscriminate ground shelling (by) armed groups … is also killing scores of civilians,” he added.

Aleppo has been one of the areas hardest hit by escalating violence in recent months after the collapse of a partial truce brokered by the United States and Russia in February.

Government forces put eastern Aleppo under siege on Sunday for a second time since July after advancing against rebels on the city’s outskirts. The city has long been divided between government and opposition areas of control.

The Syrian conflict has killed more than 250,000 people and forced more than 11 million from their homes.

(Reporting by John Davison; additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva.; Editing by Larry King)