Syrian Opposition Claims Evidence of Chlorine Gas Attack
On Friday, Syria’s government and opposition forces accused each other of using poison gas in the rebel-held village of Kafr Zita in the central province of Hama, 125 miles from Damascus.
Both sides said chlorine gas was used on a civilian population, killing at least two people and injuring more than 100. ‘The gas, which has industrial uses, “is not on a list of chemical weapons that Assad declared to the global chemical weapons watchdog last year for destruction. It is a so-called dual-use chemical, which would have to be declared to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,” Reuters reports, quoting an OPCW spokesman. To back up a their claim that Assad’s forces used chemical weapons in two attacks last week, “activists from the Syrian Revolution in Kfar Zeita group posted video footage and pictures of an unexploded canister with the chemical symbol for chlorine, Cl2, on its side which they said was found in the village.”
Today the OPCW said a 13th consignment of chemicals was shipped out of Latakia, bringing the amount of evacuated chemicals up to just over 65 percent of Syria’s internationally declared stockpile. OPCW Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu has welcomed the shipment as “necessary and encouraging, but said “the frequency and volumes of deliveries have to increase significantly” to get Syria back on track to have its entire stockpile destroyed by June 30.
Syria’s Assad Claims Upper Hand in War ‘Turning Point’
In an address at Damascus University, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad claimed the upper hand in a civil war that has killed more than 150,000 people and left much of his country destroyed.
“This is a turning point in the crisis, both militarily in terms of the army’s achievements in the war against terror, and socially in terms of national reconciliation processes and growing awareness of the truth behind the [attacks] targeting the country,” he said, as cited in a report by the BBC.
In recent months Syria’s army, backed by Hezbollah, has made a series of advances against the opposition. In doing so it has slowly recaptured rebel-held towns near the Lebanese border and effectively cut off rebel supply routes from Lebanon, by securing a highway leading from Damascus to central Syria.
Most recently, the Syrian army backed by Hezbollah fighters seized the ancient Christian town of Maaloula near the Lebanese border, closing off more of the rebel supply through the Qalamoun mountains, Reuters reports.
Reuters also reports that last week, a former Russian prime minister quoted Assad as saying that he expected much of the fighting to be over by the end of the year.
In Jordan Town, Syria War Inspires Jihadist Dreams
Ben Hubbard of the New York Times reports from Zarqa, Jordan, on the number of Jordanian fighters who have gone to fight in Syria: an estimated 800-1,200, nearly one-third of whom hail from Zarqa.
“Most fighters disappear without telling their families, only to resurface across the border with the Nusra Front, Syria’s Qaida affiliate, or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a Qaida splinter group. While some are uneducated and poor, others have university degrees and leave behind jobs, homes, cars, wives and children for a cause they believe will bring them rewards in heaven,” Hubbard writes.
Some analysts have suggested that Jordan’s politics and stagnant economy has encouraged men to become foreign fighters, but Islamist leaders, fighters and their relatives also cite a fiercely religious motivation. The fighters “see Syria as a launching pad for their project to erase the region’s borders, found an Islamic state and impose Shariah law.”
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