Syria Hands Russia Evidence Purportedly Showing Rebels Used Chemical Weapons

 


BEIRUT -- Syria has turned over materials to Russia which aim to show that a chemical weapons attack last month was carried out by rebels, a top Russian diplomat visiting Damascus and a Syrian official said Wednesday.

The Aug. 21 attack precipitated the current high tensions over Syria's chemical weapons and sparked a plan under which it is to abandon them. A report by UN investigators confirmed that chemical weapons were used Aug. 21 but did not say by which side in Syria's civil war.
The report did however provide trajectory data that suggested the chemical-loaded rockets that hit two Damascus suburbs were fired from the northwest, suggesting they came from nearby mountains where the Syrian military is known to have bases.

New York-based Human Rights Watch also said in a separate report that the presumed flight path of the rockets led back to a Republican Guard base in the same area.
"Connecting the dots provided by these numbers allows us to see for ourselves where the rockets were likely launched from and who was responsible," Josh Lyons, a satellite imagery analyst for Human Rights Watch. But, he added, the evidence was "not conclusive."

However, the ITAR-Tass news agency on Wednesday quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying that Syria told Russian officials the material it handed over shows "rebels participating in the chemical attack" but that Russia has not yet drawn any conclusions.

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