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Report: Al-Assad used chemical weapons 5 times after Khan Shaykhun

August 16, 2017 at 3:31 am

Opposition forces receive medical treatment after the Assad regime allegedly carried out a chemical gas attack in the de-conflict zone in Damascus, Syria on 20 July 2017 [Alaa Muhammed/Anadolu Agency]

The non-governmental organisation, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, said that it had recorded the use of chemical weapons five times by the Syrian regime after the attack that targeted the city of Khan Shaykhun, in rural, Idlib last April.

The report, issued by the London-based network, documented  chemical attacks conducted by the Syrian regime on opposition sites in Damascus as well as its hinterland.

The network also asserts that the Syrian regime did not stop using chemical weapons after the US administration’s bombing of Shayrat airbase, from where aircraft carried out the attack on Khan Shaykhun took off.

The report noted that the Syrian regime has tended to carry out small chemical attacks that do not leave a large number of victims, fearing that huge attacks would draw the attention of the world and “embarrass decision-makers and push them to respond.”

The network said that in the newly-documented attacks, the Syrian regime mostly used gas-loaded grenades (believed to be chlorine gas).

Read: The West’s disturbing obsession with how Syrians die

According to the report, the total number of chemical attacks between March 2011 and 31 July, 2017 reached more than 207 that caused the death of 1420 people, 1356 of whom are civilians, including 186 children and 244 women, as well as 57 opposition fighters and seven prisoners of the regime forces in opposition prisons, while at least 6672 people were injured.