Syria announced it “totally rejects” a report by an investigative committee linked to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that found Damascus responsible for a chlorine attack that killed 43 people in 2018, calling it “misleading.” Syria “categorically rejects the report prepared by the so-called Investigation and Identification Team of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.”
The ministry pointed out that the report “lacks any scientific and objective evidence”, denouncing its authors’ “misleading conclusions”.
On Friday, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons released a report in which its investigators concluded that “there are reasonable grounds to believe” that at least one Syrian Air Force Mi-8/17 helicopter dropped two poison gas cylinders on the city of Douma during war in Syria.
Damascus and its ally Moscow have previously said that the attack on April 7, 2018 was carried out by rescuers ordered by the US, who joined the UK and France in airstrikes against Syria a few days later.
The organization dismissed this hypothesis, as its report stated that its team had “closely followed the directions of investigation and scenarios proposed by the Syrian authorities and other countries, but were unable to obtain any specific information to support them.”
Aid workers said at the time they were treating people with breathing problems, foaming at the mouth and other symptoms.
The Duma case sparked controversy after the leak of classified documents by two former employees called into question the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’s previous findings regarding the 2018 attack.
In its report, the organization indicated that its investigators “examined a number of possible scenarios” and concluded that “this attack was carried out by the Syrian Air Force” in Douma in 2018.
Damascus denies using chemical weapons and insists it handed over its stockpiles as part of a deal struck in 2013 after an alleged sarin attack killed 1,400 people in Ghouta.
Syria’s right to vote in the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was suspended in 2021 due to its refusal to cooperate after it was accused of more chemical attacks.
The bloody conflict that began in Syria in 2011 has killed about half a million people, caused massive damage to infrastructure and displaced more than half of the population inside and outside the country.
