Thread: At least 100 dead in suspected chemical attack

Syrian doctor closest to attack: ‘90 percent chance this was sarin’



Michael Isikoff Chief Investigative Correspondent
Yahoo News April 4, 2017
1,227 Comments

A doctor who operates the clinic closest to the site of a chemical weapon attack in Syria told Yahoo News he personally treated “delirious” victims who were “foaming at the mouth,” gasping for air and suffering muscle spasms, symptoms he said are consistent with sarin nerve gas poisoning.

The doctor, Dr. Mohammed Mansour, sent Yahoo News a video from his clinic showing rows of young children lined up under blankets, their faces and eyes frozen, apparently unable to speak or move.

“Based on my medical expertise, there is a 90 percent chance this was sarin gas used against these civilians,” said Dr. Mohammed Mansour in a Skype interview from Idlib province, where he runs a clinic that he said is a 15-minute drive from where the attack occurred. “We had over 25 people brought to our clinic who died instantaneously. Many of the others were delirious and unable to communicate.”


A screengrab from the video supplied by Dr. Mohammed Mansour of children in his clinic in Idlib. More

Slideshow: Suspected Syria gas attack kills dozens, including children >>>

“I personally treated over 100 people, from 7:30 in the morning to 9:30 at night,” he added. He said that “70 to 80 percent of the victims were women and children.”

Those who were able to talk said most were still at home, some of them asleep, at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday when the sounds of aircraft approaching and bombs falling were heard, Mansour said. “This was a heavily civilian area,” he said. “There is not a conceivable military target in that area.”

“We are in a very dire situation,” he said. “We have a tiny clinic — literally not even a few rooms. We were able to give [the victims] oxygen and other ways of support. But we do not have anything that they actually need. We have sent [the survivors] to Turkish hospitals.”

The area of the northern province Idlib where the strike occurred is controlled by rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government. Over the past ten days, as rebel attacks have increased, the Syrian government strikes in Idlib and Hama provinces have ramped up — and there have been other chemical attacks, although much smaller than today’s, he said.

“For the last 10 days, it has been some of the most intense bombardment we’ve seen, including smaller chemical attacks,” the doctor reported.

Asked why he believes the Syrian army would have used chemical weapons on such a scale now, Mansour said: “Maybe he is feeling the pressure of the armed opposition.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/syrian-do...210501356.html

Sarin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sarin, or GB (G-series, 'B'), is a colorless, odorless liquid,^[5] used as a chemical weapon owing to its extreme potency as a nerve agent. It is generally considered a weapon of mass destruction.

Production and stockpiling of sarin was outlawed as of April 1997 by the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993, and it is classified as a Schedule 1 substance. In June 1994, the UN Special Commission on Iraqi disarmament destroyed the nerve agent sarin under Security Council resolution 687 (1991) concerning the disposal of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.^[6]

Sarin is an organophosphorus compound with the formula [(CH₃)₂CHO]CH₃P(O)F. It can be lethal even at very low concentrations, where death can occur within one^[7][8] to ten minutes after direct inhalation of a lethal dose, due to suffocation from lung muscle paralysis, unless some antidotes, typically atropine and an oxime, such as pralidoxime, are quickly administered.^[5] People who absorb a non-lethal dose, but do not receive immediate medical treatment, may suffer permanent neurological damage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin

A senior State Department official said the attack appeared to be a war crime and called on Russia and Iran to restrain the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria from carrying out further chemical strikes.

Secretary Tillerson, you have to clean these left-over lying losers from the Obama Administration out of your State Department or you're going to be stepping in chicken doo-doo for 4 long years. I don't think you left your wonderful life at Exxon and all that could have followed in retirement to spend 4 years doing that.

You know Syria didn't do this. Russia knows they didn't do this. Our people in Syria know Syria didn't do this. They bombed an opposition weapons factory where chemicals were stored. Assad has every right to bomb that factory to take out the weapons being used against his forces and the Syrian people.

The lies about Syria and Assad have to end. What the "rebels" are doing in Syria is the same crap they pulled in Egypt during the Arab Spring, the same as what they did with their videos in Libya. It's all propaganda to gain support in over-throwing governments to install Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS leadership in these countries.

STOP IT. Assad is the right leader for now. He's a doctor, an opthamologist, he left Syria to be a doctor, assuming his older brother would follow in his father's footsteps, but when the father died, soon after the brother died, and Assad was forced to go back to Syria and run the country. He would never use chemical weapons on the people of Syria. This is something ISIS would do, not Bashar Assad.

Originally Posted by Judy

It's what you do in war to stop an enemy from using them on you. Assad was right to bomb the chemical weapons factory of ISIS/Rebels.

The information you're attempting to pass off as fact is coming directly from the Assad regime. Nobody outside the regime has suggested the poisonous gases came from a chemical weapons factory. Assad is a very evil man and for anyone to deny the possibility of his direct culpability in this is ridiculous.

Assad is not an evil man. But if you want to fall for ISIS propaganda, have at it.

10 Most Evil Rulers in History

by Sarah Salman

Excerpt:


9. Bashar Al-Assad



Known as a horrible and inconsiderate leader, Bashar Al-Assad deprived the citizens of Syria their basic right to lead a peaceful life. He is a violent man who uses violent means to keep check on people who don’t support him. Bashar ran unopposed in the 2007 presidential election, and his secret police force (the Mukhabarat) has routinely kidnapped, tortured, and killed political activists who were against him. Since 2011, the Syrian Army and security services have been using tanks and rockets indiscriminately against members of the Syrian opposition and ordinary civilians.

http://www.wonderslist.com/10-evil-r...n-the-history/

Al Qaeda quietly gaining territory in Syria amid ISIS fight

By Carlo Muñoz - The Washington Times
Thursday, March 23, 2017

Al Qaeda’s affiliates in Syria have begun gaining ground in the central part of the country, taking advantage of the regime’s increased focus on the ongoing fight against Islamic State in northern Syria.

Fighters from Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham, a faction of the former Syrian al Qaeda cell now known as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, have overrun government forces in the central Syrian cities of Qomhana and Ma’an, 30 miles south of anti-government stronghold of Idlib, according to local reports.


The attacks come as forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad has begun diverting his forces from battling rebel fighters in central Syria to territory held by Islamic State, or ISIS or ISIL. The ensuing vacuum has allowed al Qaeda-affiliated groups to push into rebel-held territory near Idlib and Hama.

It remains unclear how far the group’s Syrian cells will push unchecked by Damascus into rebel territory. But those efforts in Syria fall in line with al Qaeda’s recent resurgence in Yemen, west Africa, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Earlier this week, the Trump White House issued a ban on all electronics inside the cabins U.S.-bound commercial aircraft from several Mideast countries. Administration officials claim the ban was motivated by information on a new terror threat emanating from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group’s formidable Yemeni cell.

But Abu Jaber, general commander for Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham, disavowed any ties between his organization and al Qaeda. The group, under Jaber’s command, “is an independent entity and not an extension of previous organizations or factions,” he said in a statement issued in February.

Al Qaeda’s Yemeni cell, formerly known as al Nusra Front, had allied with rebel forces battling to overthrow the Assad regime after the Obama administration balked at proposed strikes against the regime during the height of the Syrian civil war.

In the aftermath, al Qaeda fighters quickly co-opted the Syrian resistance, infiltrating American-backed groups such as the Free Syrian Army and other moderate rebel groups. With Assad’s brutal victory in Aleppo, retaking the rebel redoubt with the support of a blistering air campaign by Russian warplanes, moderate and extremist factions within the anti-Assad forces splintered across the country.

http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/20...ria-amid-isis/

Originally Posted by Judy

Al Qaeda quietly gaining territory in Syria amid ISIS fight

By Carlo Muñoz - The Washington Times
Thursday, March 23, 2017

Al Qaeda’s affiliates in Syria have begun gaining ground in the central part of the country, taking advantage of the regime’s increased focus on the ongoing fight against Islamic State in northern Syria.

Fighters from Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham, a faction of the former Syrian al Qaeda cell now known as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, have overrun government forces in the central Syrian cities of Qomhana and Ma’an, 30 miles south of anti-government stronghold of Idlib, according to local reports.


The attacks come as forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad has begun diverting his forces from battling rebel fighters in central Syria to territory held by Islamic State, or ISIS or ISIL. The ensuing vacuum has allowed al Qaeda-affiliated groups to push into rebel-held territory near Idlib and Hama.

It remains unclear how far the group’s Syrian cells will push unchecked by Damascus into rebel territory. But those efforts in Syria fall in line with al Qaeda’s recent resurgence in Yemen, west Africa, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Earlier this week, the Trump White House issued a ban on all electronics inside the cabins U.S.-bound commercial aircraft from several Mideast countries. Administration officials claim the ban was motivated by information on a new terror threat emanating from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group’s formidable Yemeni cell.

But Abu Jaber, general commander for Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham, disavowed any ties between his organization and al Qaeda. The group, under Jaber’s command, “is an independent entity and not an extension of previous organizations or factions,” he said in a statement issued in February.

Al Qaeda’s Yemeni cell, formerly known as al Nusra Front, had allied with rebel forces battling to overthrow the Assad regime after the Obama administration balked at proposed strikes against the regime during the height of the Syrian civil war.

In the aftermath, al Qaeda fighters quickly co-opted the Syrian resistance, infiltrating American-backed groups such as the Free Syrian Army and other moderate rebel groups. With Assad’s brutal victory in Aleppo, retaking the rebel redoubt with the support of a blistering air campaign by Russian warplanes, moderate and extremist factions within the anti-Assad forces splintered across the country.

http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/20...ria-amid-isis/

ISIS and Al-Qaeda have taken over this area. That's why Assad has beefed up the attacks there.

Haley: If UN won't act on Syria, US may

By Miranda Green and Richard Roth, CNN
Updated 1:23 PM ET, Wed April 5, 2017

Washington (CNN) US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley strongly condemned Russia and the Syrian government Wednesday over the chemical weapons attack on civilians, suggesting that the US is open to using military action to solve the country's ongoing civil war.

"When the UN consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action," Haley said.

Haley, who is also the UN Security Council president, was speaking as the council considers a resolution condemning the Assad regime for the attack, which killed dozens, including many children.

Russia, which backs the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is likely to veto the resolution.

"How many more children have to die before Russia cares?" Haley said as she displayed photos of the victims.

Her comments are the most direct threat of unilateral action by the US delegation at the UN to solve the Syria crisis. The remarks are especially notable as the Trump administration has struck a more lenient tone on the regime of Assad, breaking with the Obama administration in demanding he abdicate power.

Representatives from the US, United Kingdom and France have ‎circulated a draft resolution demanding that the Syrian government provide flight logs from Tuesday, the day of the attack, which killed dozens, including many children. The draft also calls for meetings with Syrian generals or other officers.

The resolution explicitly condemns the use of chemical weapons within Syria and states that their use represents a threat to international peace and security.

An emergency Security Council meeting was called at UN headquarters in response to the suspected targeted attack.

The Syrian military under Assad has denied responsibility for the attack, claiming it would never use chemical weapons.

Multiple countries denounced the attack on Wednesday before and during the Security Council hearing.

Bahram Qasemi, a spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry, said the country "strongly condemns" the use of chemical weapons in Syria "regardless of the perpetrators and the victims."

France's UN ambassador, François Delattre, said of the attack:

"That reminds us of the day of the regime's attack on Damascus.

This chemical horror opens a new spiral into the abyss of the human tragedy."

But Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova blasted the resolution, telling reporters Wednesday it was "unacceptable" and that it was drafted too quickly.

The UK and Chinese ambassadors also exchanged sharp words over responsibility for UN inaction.

UK Ambassador Matthew Rycroft condemned prior vetoes by China and Russia, which blocked international action on Syria. But China's Ambassador Liu Jieyi, in a rare diplomatic outburst, said the UK delegate should stop "abusing" the Security Council.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/05/politi...olution-syria/

TRUMP POINTS FINGER AT ASSAD blames Damascus for ‘heinous’ gas attack