Careful not to blame either side for a deadly chemical weapon attack, UN inspectors reported Monday that rockets loaded with the nerve agent sarin had been fired from an area where Syria's military has bases, but said the evidence could have been manipulated in the rebel-controlled stricken neighborhoods, according to the Associated Press.
The U.S., Britain and France jumped on evidence in the report — especially the type of rockets, the composition of the sarin agent, and trajectory of the missiles — to declare that President Bashar Assad's government was responsible.
Russia called the investigators' findings "deeply disturbing," but said it was too early to draw conclusions. The Syrian government's claims that opposition forces were responsible for the attack "cannot be simply shrugged off," Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin insisted.
The conclusions represented the first official confirmation by impartial scientific experts that chemical weapons were used in Syria's civil war, but the inspectors' limited mandate barred them from identifying who was responsible for the Aug 21 attack.
"This is a war crime," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council when he presented the report. "The results are overwhelming and indisputable. The facts speak for themselves."
Ban called it "the most significant confirmed use of chemical weapons against civilians since Saddam Hussein used them" in Halabja, Iran, in 1988, and "the worst use of weapons of mass destruction in the 21st century."
After months of negotiations, the UN inspectors went to Syria to visit the sites of three alleged chemical attacks earlier this year and were in the capital of Damascus on Aug. 21 when reports and videos began surfacing of a shelling attack in which victims experienced shortness of breath, disorientation, blurred vision, nausea, vomiting, weakness and a loss of consciousness.
They finally gained access to three towns where the Aug 21 attack occurred, and on one occasion their convoy was hit by sniper fire, but the inspectors were nonetheless able to collect a large amount of material and talk to survivors and witnesses.
"The environmental, chemical and medical samples we have collected provide clear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used … in the Ghouta area of Damascus," their report said.
"The conclusion is that chemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in the Syrian Arab Republic, also against civilians, including children, on a relatively large scale," they said. "This result leaves us with the deepest concern."
The inspectors described the rockets used to disperse the sarin as a variant of an M14 artillery rocket, with either an original or an improvised warhead. The report said the rockets that hit two of the suburbs — Zamalka and Ein Tarma — were fired from the northwest, but it didn't say who launched them.
The inspectors did not provide a location for the rockets' launch site, but Qassioun Mountain, where the Syrian military is known to have bases, is roughly northwest of both suburbs.
"From the wealth of technical detail in the report – including on the scale of the attack, the consistency of sample test results from separate laboratories, witness statements, and information on the munitions used and their trajectories – it is abundantly clear that the Syrian regime is the only party that could have been responsible," UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said, according to BBC News.
U.S. ambassador to the UN Samantha Power used similar language when saying: "The technical details of the UN report make clear that only the regime could have carried out this large-scale chemical weapons attack."
She also pointed out that the 122mm rockets cited in the report were of the type previously associated with government forces and that the quality of the sarin was higher than that used by Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said: "When you look at the findings carefully, the quantities of toxic gas used, the complexity of the mixes, the nature, and the trajectory of the carriers, it leaves absolutely no doubt as to the origin of the attack."
Fabius is travelling to Moscow on Tuesday for negotiations over a possible UN Security Council resolution on the agreement to place Syria's chemical arsenal under international control.
