The world’s chemical weapons watchdog voted to condemn Syria for using banned sarin and chlorine bombs, months after investigators concluded the Syrian Arab Air Force were behind 2017 chemical attacks.
The Executive Council of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in the Hague voted 29-3 on Thursday to condemn the chemical weapons use.
“The Council … condemned the use of chemical weapons as reported by the OPCW Investigation and Identification Team, which concluded that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the Syrian Arab Republic used chemical weapons in Ltamenah, Syria in March 2017,” the decision said, according to Reuters.
It also established that Syria “failed to declare and destroy all of its chemical weapons and chemical weapons production facilities.”
The OPCW’s Investigation and Identification Team concluded in April that the Syrian Arab Air Force carried out chemical attacks on March 24, 25, and 30 in 2017, which killed or sickened more than 100 people. Specifically, the 50th Brigade of the 22nd Air Division of the Syrian Air Force dropped M4000 bombs containing the nerve agent sarin gas in Ltamenah. A canister containing chlorine was also dropped onto a hospital in the town.
“Military operations of such a strategic nature as these three attacks only occur pursuant to orders from the highest levels of the Syrian Arab Armed Forces,” the investigative team said.
Syria has been embroiled in a complicated and bloody civil war since the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011. Despite the accusations from the OPCW and the United States of chemical weapon use, Syria and its ally Russia have denied that sarin or chlorine has been deployed.
The OPCW’s Thursday decision gives the Syrian government, led by strongman Bashar Assad, 90 days to declare “the facilities where the chemical weapons, including precursors, munitions, and devices, used in the 24, 25, and 30 March 2017 attacks were developed, produced, stockpiled, and operationally stored for delivery.”
