PARIS: France has said it will introduce “intervention measures” if claims of a fresh Syrian government chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta prove to be true.
Activists in Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus, released videos on Wednesday showing what appears to be phosphorus bombs being dropped, claiming that the attack took place in the residential town of Hamouriyah.
The videos appeared to show victims struggling to breathe.
“If the use of chemical weapons were found, verified, attributed and the use of the chemical weapon left people dead,” France would take “intervention measures to prevent the proliferation of chemical weapons,” Jean-Yves Le Drian, French foreign minister, was quoted by the official Chinese Xinhua news agency as saying.
The Syrian government has denied the claims, saying that “desperate rebels” were attempting to distort facts.
“Yesterday night was the darkest and most horrific night ever. They used phosphorus, napalm, cluster bombs and chlorine gas,” Ammar al-Selmo, a volunteer aid worker for the Syrian Civil Defence, told Al Jazeera by phone from the opposition-held enclave.
“Our teams were panicking because it was like 2013, when [President Bashar] al-Assad’s regime used chemical weapons on Ghouta.”
Eastern Ghouta has been under control of armed opposition groups since 2013 – two years into a popular uprising in Syria calling for the removal of Assad.
When the government responded with force, locals and army defectors took up arms and managed to gain control of large territories across the country.
With Russia’s intervention in 2015, Assad’s forces have been able to regain most of the territory, but Eastern Ghouta remains one of Syria’s last armed opposition’s strongholds.
