The Idlib province of Syria came under the attack of poisonous gases killing at least 72 people, including 11 children. The chemical attack happened in the early hours of Tuesday, 4th April 2017, in Khan Sheikhoun, a rebel held town. More than 550 people were also injured who were taken to the Turkish hospitals near the Syrian border.
The attack started when people in the neighborhood woke up from sounds of planes flying overhead and sounds of a bombing after which they were engulfed in the toxic gases. The Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) claimed that the victims at the scene suffered from unconsciousness and muscle spasms whereas some others even had constricted pupils, slow heart rate, vomit and foam in the mouth. These symptoms are indicative of an organo-phosphorus compound agent – a category of toxic gases which includes sarin. “We were affected by the gas. We couldn’t stand up,” Said Veda Ajej, one of the victims treated. “I felt dizzy and nauseous. I couldn’t breathe,” she said.
The source of the attack is yet unknown but it is being speculated that there might be the hand of the Syrian government in it. If confirmed, it would be the deadliest chemical attack in Syria since sarin gas killed hundreds of civilians in Ghouta, near the capital, Damascus, in August 2013. The Syrian military said it “categorically denied” responsibility for the attack. Their Russian counterparts have also denied sending any air force to the area but instead pinned the reason on the Syrians whose airstrike had hit a “terrorist warehouse” containing an arsenal of “toxic substances” destined for fighters in Iraq. “Yesterday [Tuesday,] from 11:30 A.M., to 12:30 P.M., local time, Syrian aviation made a strike on a large terrorist ammunition depot and a concentration of military hardware in the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun town,” Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konoshenkov said. “On the territory of the depot there were workshops which produced chemical warfare munitions.”
Either ways the attack points at the unerring bulldozer kind of approach by Bashar-al-Assad, President of Syria, towards claiming back the territories from the militants. The horrors of Aleppo are yet to be washed away from our minds before this incident comes to light.
