OPCW: Assad's army dropped chlorine on an apartment building in Syria, killing 43 civilians

Photo: EPA / SANA

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said today that investigations have revealed that the regime of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is responsible for the chlorine attack on the city of Douma in 2018, which killed 43 people.

The OPCW report states that there are "reasonable grounds to believe" that an Assad regime military helicopter targeted a residential area in the city with two cylinders filled with chlorine, reports Anadolu.

Douma is the capital of Rif Dimashk province and is located ten kilometers northeast of Damascus.

According to the report, the bombs were loaded at the Dumair air base, northeast of Damascus, and the shooting was carried out by the elite forces of the Syrian regime.

"The investigative team considered a number of possible scenarios and tested their validity against the evidence collected and analyzed to reach the conclusion: the Syrian Arab Air Force was the perpetrator of this attack," the organization said in a statement.

OPCW chief Fernando Arias stressed that the use of chemical weapons in Douma and anywhere else is unacceptable and a violation of international law.

The OPCW previously found that the regime used chemical weapons in Al Lataminah in March 2017 and in Saraqib in February 2018.

The Hague-based OPCW, the implementing body of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), oversees global efforts to permanently eliminate chemical weapons.

The use of chlorine as a chemical weapon is a violation of the Syrian regime's obligations under the CWC, to which the country is a signatory, as well as United Nations Security Council resolution 2118.

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