A chemical criticism on a rebel-held town in eastern Ghouta killed dozens of people, a medical redress organisation and a rescue service said, and Washington said the reports — if upheld — would demand an immediate international response.
A joint statement by the medical assistance organisation Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) and the civil defense, which goes in rebel-held areas, said 49 people had died.
The Russian-backed Syrian declare denied government forces had launched any chemical attack as reports began spread on Saturday night. The government said rebels in the eastern Ghouta community of Douma were collapsing and spreading false news.
Reuters could not independently demonstrate the reports.
The lifeless bodies of around a dozen children, women and men, some of them with froth at the mouth, were shown in one video circulated by activists. “Douma conurbation, April 7 … there is a strong smell here,” a voice can be get wind ofed saying.
The U.S. State Department said reports of mass casualties from an described chemical weapons attack in Douma were “horrifying” and would, if established, “demand an immediate response by the international community”.
President Bashar al-Assad has won in serious trouble control of nearly all of eastern Ghouta in a Russian-backed military campaign that created in February, leaving just Douma in rebel hands. After a respite of a few days, government forces began bombarding Douma again on Friday.
The provocative in Ghouta has been one of the deadliest of the seven-year-long war, killing more than 1,600 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Somebody Rights.
The Observatory said it could not confirm whether chemical weapons had been hardened in the attack on Saturday.
Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman said 11 people had give up the ghosted in Douma as a result of suffocation caused by the smoke from conventional weapons being dripped by the government. It said a total of 70 people suffered breathing hot potatoes.
Medical relief organisation SAMS said a chlorine bomb hit Douma convalescent home, killing six people, and a second attack with “mixed agents” tabulating nerve agents had hit a nearby building.
Basel Termanini, the U.S.-based flaw president of SAMS, told Reuters another 35 people had been neutralized at the nearby apartment building, most of them women and children.
SAMS carry ons 139 medical facilities in Syria where it supports 1,880 medical personnel, according to its website.
“We are friending the U.N. and the U.S. government and the European governments,” he said by telephone.
The joint statement from SAMS and the secular defense said medical centers had received more than 500 for fear of the facts of people suffering breathing difficulties, frothing from the mouth and stink of chlorine.
One of the victims was dead on arrival, and six died later, it said. Domestic defense volunteers reported more than 42 cases of people late at their homes showing the same symptoms, it said.
Syrian style news agency SANA said the rebel group in Douma, Jaish al-Islam, was making “chemical wasting fabrications in an exposed and failed attempt to obstruct advances by the Syrian Arab army,” citing an documented source.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauret recalled a 2017 sarin gas spasm in northwestern Syria that the West and the United Nations blamed on Assad’s guidance.
The Assad regime and its backers must be held accountable and any further seizures prevented immediately,” she said.
“The United States calls on Russia to end this complete support immediately and work with the international community to prevent further, barbaric chemical weapons deprecations,” Nauert said in a statement.
The Syrian government has repeatedly denied servicing chemical weapons during the conflict.