Soil samples support gas war claims

People in Aleppo salvage their belongings after a bombing attack. Photo / AP

Witnesses saw containers dropped by helicopters, and president's forces are only combatant with them.

President Bashar al-Assad is using chemical weapons against civilian targets in Syria, a scientific analysis of samples taken from multiple gas attacks has shown.

In the first independent testing of its kind, conducted for the Daily Telegraph, soil samples from the scene of three recent attacks were collected by trained individuals and analysed by a chemical warfare expert.

They showed that chlorine and ammonia gas had been used in strikes on two villages in Idlib province last month, said Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commander of the British Army's chemical and biological warfare defences. The Geneva Protocol, signed by Syria in 1968, bans the "use in war" of any "asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases".

The attacks were made by military helicopters, which dropped barrel bombs loaded with gas. In some cases, the weapons carried canisters marked with their chemical contents. Syria's regime is the only combatant in the civil war that possesses helicopters.

"We have unequivocally proved that the regime has used chlorine and ammonia against its own civilians in the last two to three weeks," said de Bretton-Gordon. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says it will send inspectors to Syria to investigate. The Syrian regime promised to accept this mission and provide security. The regime had previously agreed to surrender its chemical weapons after a sarin gas attack in Damascus killed 1400 people last August. But the evidence shows that Assad's forces then resorted to using other types of chemical weapon. In the past two weeks, eight gas attacks have been made against rebel-held towns and villages in Idlib province.

Tests by the Daily Telegraph confirm that chlorine and ammonia gas were used against the villages of Kafr Zita on April 11 and April 18 and Talmenes on April 21. At least three people were killed and hundreds injured. The tests were based on soil samples collected from the locations by Dr Ahmad, a Syrian doctor whose real identity cannot be disclosed. He also supplied video footage showing people suffering symptoms typical of poisoning by chlorine and ammonia gas: sore eyes, irritated skin, difficult breathing and a bloody foaming from the mouth.

In Gaziantep, Turkey, de Bretton-Gordon tested for chlorine and ammonia. "In each of the samples we have found evidence of chlorine. The samples indicate that ammonia has also been used in Kafr Zita." Eliot Higgins, an expert on the weapons used in Syria's civil war, said: "Reports from all towns and villages attacked with chlorine and ammonia agree the chemical barrel bombs were dropped from helicopters. The remains of the barrel bombs even suggest improvements have been made to make them more efficient ... short of multiple towns and villages conspiring to lie about the nature of the attack, the Syrian air force was responsible."