![]() There was no immediate comment by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but in the past, it has denied the allegations of chemical weapons use as “fabrications”. Weaponising chlorine is prohibited under the Chemical Weapons Convention, ratified by Syria in 2013, and is prohibited under customary international humanitarian law. “The use of chemical weapons in Douma – and anywhere – is unacceptable and a breach of international law,” he said. “The world now knows the facts – it is up to the international community to take action, at the OPCW and beyond,” said the organisation’s director general, Fernando Arias. It noted that the “reasonable grounds” degree of certainty is the standard of proof consistently adopted by international fact-finding bodies and commissions of inquiry that investigate potential violations of international law. The watchdog said it came to its conclusions after analysing physical evidence, including 70 environmental and biomedical samples 66 witness statements and other verified data, such as forensic analyses and satellite images. On April 7, 2018, at least one helicopter of the Syrian army’s elite Tiger Forces unit “dropped two yellow cylinders containing toxic chlorine gas on two apartment buildings in a civilian-inhabited area in Douma, killing 43 named individuals and affecting dozens more”, inspectors at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said in a report released on Friday. ![]() The global chemical weapons watchdog has concluded there are “reasonable grounds” to believe that Syrian government forces carried out a chemical weapons attack in a rebel-held town that killed dozens of people nearly five years ago.
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