Syria chemical attack: what we know so far
On April 4, a suspected Syrian government chemical attack left dozens dead, including children, in a rebel-held town in Syria's Idlib province.
The latest chapter in the Syrian conflict has been described as one of the most deadly chemical weapon attacks in years.
Syrian journalist Rami Jarrah, who has been covering the war, joins The Current's guest host Piya Chattopadhyay.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and length
Piya Chattopadhyay: Let's first talk about the scene and the scope of this attack. What do we know about the scope of it? How many people were wounded? How many have died?
PC: So about 120 is what you're estimating right now in terms of how many people were killed - men, women and children. What about wounded? How many people were hurt in this?
RJ: I don't think that's very clear at the moment. But the last numbers that came in were around 450. And this is because not all were just contaminated but people harmed by the excessive use of area bombardment. There were three airstrikes that took place at 6:30 a.m. … when they used this deadly agent which we are assuming might be sarin, which is definitely not chlorine.
PC: I don't know much about chemical weapons. How do we know that?
RJ: I'm not claiming that it is sarin but based on what the doctors have said on the ground and the analysis they've made, it's definitely not chlorine. And it is something similar to sarin because it disrupts the central nervous system, and it creates an internal panic within the nervous system where the body doesn't know how to cope with itself anymore - there's overheating, there's foam coming out of the mouth, the eyes are dilated, there's a yellow substance around the eyelids. And this is all stuff that was apparent when sarin was used.
PC: Let's talk just briefly about the international response. The UN Security Council is holding an emergency meeting today. The U.S. is calling on Iran and Russia to prevent chemical weapons attacks in Syria. You know the Trump administration is signaling that it is more sympathetic to Bashar al-Assad than the previous Obama administration. How effective is this kind of international community response expected to be?
RJ: I think it's better than nothing. But Piya, the problem with this is that we saw this in 2013 and we saw a lot of … very strong statements. And this was during a phase where a lot countries had actually kicked out Syrian ambassadors … and a lot of that has been reversed now. So I think now the atmosphere is actually much easier for Assad to get away with this.
The special envoy to the UN Staffan de Mistura said yesterday that an investigation needs to be launched. That sounds very incompetent of the person in charge of Syria from the aspect of the United Nations.
A statement has actually just been released by Syrian citizens and Syrian activists and prominent activists and they're actually offering to volunteer to actually learn how to gather evidence from chemical weapons and to go into the contaminated area themselves and gather it. It's actually satire where we're trying to provoke the United Nations and saying 'if you won't do your job, we'll do it'. And no one said it was easy. I mean because every time this is proposed they say that Syria is too dangerous. Of course it's too dangerous, and it's definitely too dangerous for children that live in those zones that are just civilians.
But there hasn't been any serious attempt to put a finger on this and say, 'this person or this side is a perpetrator.'
Listen to the full conversation at the top of this web post.
This segment was produced by The Current's Shannon Higgins.