Reuters is reporting:
Chemical weapons experts have determined that mustard gas was used in a Syrian town where Islamic State insurgents were battling another rebel group, according to a report by an international watchdog … The findings provide the first official confirmation of use of sulfur mustard, commonly known as mustard gas, in Syria since it agreed to destroy its chemical weapons stockpile, which included sulfur mustard.
ISIS is, presumably, responsible which should come as no surprise. It has not exhibited any sense of limits when it comes to atrocities or the violation of “U.N. Security Council resolutions and the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention.”
Gas, of course, is an especially repellent weapon. The use of which the world has condemned since it was first used slightly more than one hundred years ago, in Belgium, on the Western Front.
Even so:
With Syria’s civil war in its fifth year, chlorine has also been used illegally in systematic attacks against civilians, the OPCW found. In the Idlib province south of Aleppo, the report said, there were several incidents between March and May of 2015 that “likely involved the use of one or more toxic chemicals”.
Rules and laws and prohibitions are one thing. Enforcement … another.
