A man, affected by what activists say is nerve gas, breathes through an oxygen mask in the Damascus suburbs of Jesreen on August 21, 2013. PHOTO: REUTERS
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's office said he was "shocked" by the reports of the attack and that UN inspectors in Syria to probe previous allegations were in discussions with Damascus.
Security Council members France, Britain, the United States, Luxembourg and South Korea requested the meeting, which was to be held in the form of closed-door consultations, a diplomat said.
Paris and London were to send a joint letter Wednesday to the secretary general asking him to order the team of UN experts in Syria to go to the scene to investigate.
The United States demanded that Syria provide immediate access to the site, while Russia, a close ally of the Syrian government, called the opposition claims a "provocation."
The main Syrian opposition group claims as many as 1,300 people were killed in a chemical weapons attack Wednesday on rebel areas near Damascus.
Videos distributed by activists, the authenticity of which could not immediately be verified, showed medics attending to suffocating children and hospitals being overwhelmed.
The objective of the Security Council consultations is to "take the temperature and to inform" the 15 members, but it was not expected to result in any formal position, a diplomat said.
The diplomat also said it would be difficult for the UN experts to investigate the incident because the alleged attack site was not one of three where the Syrian regime had agreed to UN inspections.
That means that the head of the UN experts in Syria, Ake Sellstrom of Sweden, must negotiate access to the new site with Syrian authorities, the diplomat said.
The UN statement said Sellstrom's team is "following the current situation in Syria carefully, and remains fully engaged in the investigation process that is mandated by the Secretary General.
"Professor Sellstrom is in discussions with the Syrian Government on all issues pertaining to the alleged use of chemical weapons, including this most recent reported incident."
COMMENTS (3)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ
1672385156-0/Andrew-Tate-(1)1672385156-0-165x106.webp "article")
It seems suspect that Assad's regime would launch a chemical attack on the very same day the UN inspectors arrive in Damascus to visit 3 sites in which he granted permission to do so. Why would the Syrian regime resort to such tactics when they made huge gains in defeating the insurgent jihadies without such drastic measures. Doing this would be akin to committing tactical suicide and that too on an area 5 blocks away from where the UN inspectors were based. Logically, it makes little sense.
In January 29th, 2013 UK's Daily Mail's online version published an article titled 'U.S. ‘backed plan to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria and blame it on Assad’s regime’. A few days later the article was pulled without explanation. Here is the cached version: Daily Mail article. Carla Del Ponte a senior United Nations official and former Swiss attorney-general also accused Syrian rebels of carrying out sarin gas attacks which had been blamed on Assad's troops. Original source. The only ones who stand to gain from this atrocity are the insurgents and their foreign backers, who have publicly stated that any chemical attack would be crossing the 'red line', that would be used as a pretext to militarily bomb and invade the country.
what a careless nation we have become, we only care abt our own problems and not looking at the muslim countries as our ummah, one ummah. Wonder if people read this news and think abt how people suffers in syria. What a shame situation we are in. May Allah help us.