| inbluevt | Date: Sunday, 2013/08/25, 1:37 AM | Message # 1 | DMCA |
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President Barack Obama summoned his national security team on Saturday to discuss reports of a chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government outside Damascus, as fresh reports of mass civilian casualties emerged. As the UN pressed for access to the sites where hundreds of civilians, including children, died in an apparent poison gas attack, Mr Obama weighed up how to react to the most serious event of the two and half year Syrian civil war.
The humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières said that three hospitals it supports in the Damascus governorate reported receiving 3600 people with “neurotoxic symptoms” in less than three
hours on Wednesday morning, of whom 355 died.
Dr Bart Janssens, MSF director of operations, said that whilst the organisation could not confirm the cause of the symptoms reported, they “strongly indicate mass exposure to a neurotoxic agent.”
Syrian state media said it had been the rebels that used chemical agents, saying that a recent army offensive had forced them to play “their last card.” State media said government troops had suffered
respiratory problems. No video of these soldiers was produced.
A White House official said Mr Obama was directing the intelligence community to gather facts and evidence “so that we can determine what occurred in Syria.”
The official added: “We have a range of options available, and we are going to act very deliberately so that we’re making decisions consistent with our national interest as well as our assessment of what
can advance our objectives in Syria.”
The Associated Press reported that US naval forces were moving closer to Syria as President Obama considered military options.
US defence officials told AP that the US Navy had sent a fourth warship armed with ballistic missiles into the eastern Mediterranean but without immediate orders for any missile launch into Syria.
While the US put an emphasis on continuing to establish the facts of the incident, Washington’s main European allies were directly blaming the Assad regime for a chemical attack.
On Saturday, France’s foreign minister Laurent Fabius said that “all the information at our disposal converges to indicate that there was a chemical massacre near Damascus and that the [regime of
Bashar al-Assad] is responsible”.
A day earlier, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said he believed “this is a chemical attack by the Assad regime” and it was “not something that a humane or civilised world can ignore”.
The UN disarmament chief Angela Kane arrived in Damascus to press the Syrian government for access to the alleged site of the chemical weapons attack.
UN Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said this week he was determined to “conduct a thorough, impartial and prompt investigation” into the events.
He has sent Ms Kane to press the Syrian authorities to allow a team of 20 experts on chemical weapons – already in Damascus – to investigate the claims.
On Friday, Mr Obama called the alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria a matter of “grave concern” that would require American attention, breaking his silence on an episode that has prompted calls for greater western intervention.
Meanwhile, Damascus’s main international patron, Russia, for the first time publicly urged Bashar al-Assad, Syrian president, to comply with demands to open up the site of the alleged attack to
international inspectors.
However, in an interview on Friday with CNN Mr Obama said the US’s ability to solve “a sectarian, complex problem was sometimes overstated”, despite calls by France and Mr Assad’s Syrian opponents for international intervention.
Graphic scenes from the site of Wednesday’s alleged attack in the eastern suburb of Ghouta, have filled broadcast channels and social media websites in recent days, prompting fresh concern about the two and a half year conflict between Mr Assad’s regime and its opponents, despite reluctance by the west to intervene.
Message edited by inbluevt - Sunday, 2013/08/25, 1:41 AM |
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