Posted on 08/22/2013 5:01:45 AM PDT by bert
Syrian National Coalition says at least 1,100 dead in alleged nerve gas attack on civilians in eastern Damascus suburb
n emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council Wednesday called for a prompt investigation into an alleged deadly gas attack by Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces that activists say killed hundreds of civilians outside Damascus, the Syrian capital. If confirmed, the attack would be the worst reported use of chemical arms in the two-year-old civil war, and would apparently cross what President Barack Obama has called a "red line."
snip..... The government attacks reportedly took place in the Ghouta region, east of Damascus, in suburbs including Zamalka, Arbeen and Ein Tarma. The Syrian government denied that it had used chemical weapons.
Information Minister Omran Zoabi said the allegations were "illogical and fabricated." A Syrian military officer appeared on state television and said the allegations were untrue and a sign of "hysteria and floundering" by Assad's opponents.
A video purportedly shot in Kafr Batna, a suburb on the eastern outskirts of Damascus, showed a room filled with more than 90 bodies, many of them children, with a few women and elderly men. Most of the bodies appeared ashen or pale but with no visible injuries. About a dozen were wrapped in blankets.
"Many of the casualties are women and children. They arrived with their pupils constricted, cold limbs and foam in their mouths. The doctors say these are typical symptoms of nerve gas victims," a nurse at Duma Emergency Collection facility, Bayan Baker, said.
Exposure to sarin gas causes pupils in the eyes to shrink to pinpoint sizes and prompts foaming at the lips.
"The attack took place at around 3:00 a.m. (8 p.m. EST). Most of those killed were in their homes," Khaled Omar, of the opposition Local Council in Ein Tarm, east of Damascus, said.
The country's main opposition group, Syrian National Coalition, accused the regime of killing more than 1,100 people in the attacks on Twitter. From Istanbul, leading Syrian opposition figure George Sabra said the death toll from the attacks, including chemical weapons, stood at 1,300.
Snip.....
Dr. Khaled al-Doumi, a doctor and manager of the medical center of Duma, a Damascus suburb near the site of the alleged attack, said, "Medically-speaking, the symptoms indicate that poisoning was a result of phosphorous compounds that could be caused by organic insecticides or sarin gas."
"There are people trapped at home who are unreachable so the death toll is going to soar up," al-Doumi said. A statement is expected from the medical center to announce the final figures in the attack.
Speaking to Al Jazeera from Finland, Paula Vanninen, professor and the director of Verifin, the Finnish Institute for Verification of the Chemical Weapons Convention, said that it was very difficult to see what actually happened to the victims from only studying videos.
"Some of those people were shaking and could have gotten the nerve agent exposure but for others it's quite difficult to say from the video what has caused their death. But you can see that they couldn't breathe. Something has caused that they were killed by not being able to breathe anymore," she said.
Does anybody really believe Assad did the one thing that would bring the world into his country to overthrow him when he is just starting to push back the rebels? Or that if he did gas people it would be his own non rebel citizens including women and children so photos could be taken of them for the world to see, or that he would do it in his own city and not take out rebel forces in a city under attack???
Does anybody think the Russians, who are advising Assad, would allow this??
Just how stupid are we supposed to be so Obama can overthrow another Middle East strong man in favor of islam controlling Syria.
He thinks he is on a roll. And there are nutjobs like McCain who agree.
To be fair Christians did this to each other not very long ago.
Uh no they didn’t. Enough of this garbage equivalency argument
It's much like the watchdog group that left Syria last year. They were sent to monitor violence, but it became too violent for them to stay in a warzone. Violence in an area of combat? Whodathunkit?
The results of testing (if ever truly known) would be interesting. Unless it's professionally manufactured, the shelf life of Sarin is not very long. We know it can be manufactured and implemented, however crudely, by small groups of determined people. The subway attack in Tokyo during the 90s was pulled off by a local death cult. Wouldn't surprise me at all to find out MB and AQ elements inside Syria were stocking up.
Uh, yeah, they did. War is hellish and brutal. When Muslims kill each other, including civilians, during war it's hellish and brutal. When Christians kill each other, including civilians, during war it's hellish and brutal.
Is their 8th century death cult equivalent to Christian worship of the one true God? No. Is death in a war zone whether it be Europe, Asia or the Middle East equivalent? Yes.
I think it’s also odd that there are rows of “dead” people lined on the floor, but no flies.
True Muslims DO KILL in the name of Islam.
A valid argument but one that leads to some deeper theological questions.
Unless you are Dominican Roman Catholics and have an inquisition
People have killed people since Cain. There is no eqivalence between Christianity and Islam when it comes to violence. It’s like saying Timothy McVeigh represents Christianity. .
we need blue helmets in washington, dc to oust this criminal regime...
because our representatives will not act.
thanks barack.
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I saw more photos at the Daily Mail article, and I must say this all seems extremely implausible for a sarin gas attack by the Assad regime.
It must be investigated thoroughly but I have strong doubts that it is what is being claimed.
In a bunch of the Daily Mail photos the faces did not look remotely like those of corpses — I think many are staged with live people. I haven’t seen a lot of the dead and dying in my life but I’ve seen some, and many of the faces in the DM photos look like healthy people posing — skin tone and color not altered etc. One image had what did look like a child’s corpse but it was next to several who looked more alive for the contrast (no pallor at all in their faces etc.).
Absent some really convincing forensic evidence, the jury is out but I am suspicious of a big propaganda set-up.
Now, Obozoliar appears to be following in the footsteps of LBJ with his lies about Assad and Syria, while covering for the Muslim Brotherhood Thugs and al Queda in Syria.
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