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| Mariam Khatib (top) died in hospital. Her daughter, seen with a distended tongue and frothing at the mouth, survived |
The BBC has been shown evidence that appears to corroborate reports of a
chemical attack in the northern Syrian town of Saraqeb last month. Eyewitnesses
and victims say government helicopters dropped at least two devices containing
poisonous gas on the town.
The Syrian government
says it did not and will not use chemical weapons.
Shortly after midday on
29 April, the town of Saraqeb came under attack from government military
positions about five miles (8km) away. A local activist we met filmed as the
shells landed.
We cannot verify the
images but all the footage we gathered from the scene was taken by people we
met in the town and appears to have been filmed on the same day from different
positions.
The Khatib family says a device landed in
their garden
A helicopter was filmed
high above the town. Eyewitnesses say at least two canisters were dropped from it,
a claim we cannot verify.
What the camera shows
is a smoke trail as a device tumbles to the ground. It is claimed that shortly
after that, casualties started to arrive at Saraqeb hospital.
Eight people were
admitted, apparently with similar symptoms; they appear to be vomiting, with
breathing problems. The videos show patients with bloodshot eyes and some
appear to have constricted pupils.
Crossing
the red line?
Doctors, eyewitnesses
and victims insist this was a chemical attack. There have been similar claims
elsewhere in the country but the Syrian government says it did not and will not
use such weapons.
One activist shouts:
"Let the world hear, Obama, Obama, regime troops have crossed all red
lines".
Mohammed Khatib can be
seen groaning on a stretcher. Witnesses say a device had landed in his garden
and he had rushed to the scene to help his mother.
She can also be seen
seriously ill on a stretcher; unconscious and with constricted pupils. Mariam
Khatib died later that day.
Today Mohammed lives in
a tent outside of town. He says he is too afraid to return to the house, too
distraught by what happened there.
Speaking for the first
time he says he still feels weak and exhausted.
"It was a
horrible, suffocating smell. You couldn't breathe at all. Your body would
become really tired."
"You'd lose all
senses. You'd feel like you were dead. You couldn't even see. I couldn't see
anything for three or four days."
Withered
plants
One device was said to
have landed on the outskirts of town. Eyewitnesses describe a box like
container, with a hollow concrete casing inside. One video apparently shows
parts of this on the ground, surrounded by white powder.
In another video a
rebel fighter holds a canister said to be hidden inside the devices. Witnesses
claim there were two in each container. It is claimed one was recovered from
Mariam Khatib's garden.
We were taken to the
house by one of her nephews. He showed us where the device is said to have
landed. A small hole has been smashed into the tiled floor, a pair of disposable
surgeon's gloves lie abandoned nearby. The plants around the site appear to
have withered and died, showing signs of possible contamination.
We have been told that
samples from the scene and from the alleged victims have been sent to Britain,
France, Turkey and America for testing.
"A canister was
released from a helicopter and Mariam Khatib came running to the courtyard and
called her son, Mohammed, and told him there was a canister with white smoke
coming out of it" says Mariam's nephew, Maed Barish.
"She immediately
became unconscious and fell down, as did Mohammed and his wife. Fighters came
to help the family but they were also affected by the smoke."
Four patients were
taken to a hospital near the border.
Dr Jumaa Samadi, who
treated them, says they were all given decontamination showers and atropine to
treat their symptoms before being sent to a hospital in Turkey. By the time
they arrived, Mariam Khatib was dead.
"The symptoms she
displayed -- unconsciousness, vomiting, pinpoint pupils -- they all correspond
to poison gas exposure," he says.
"They often match
organophosphate poisoning. It has many derivatives, one of which is Sarin
gas."
But he says he cannot
be sure why Mariam Khatib died until the samples are analyzed.
'Strong
evidence, albeit incomplete'
Hamish de
Bretton-Gordon is a former commanding officer of the British Army's Chemical
Counter Terrorist Regiment who now runs a firm that specializes in the study of
chemical weapons.
He has not visited the
site, nor has he been able to test any of the alleged evidence. But he has
studied previous claims and videos and was given full access to all the
footage, transcripts and the interviews we gathered to give his assessment.
He describes the
"virtually identical events" that have taken place in Otaybah, Adra
and the Sheikh Massoud district of Aleppo in recent weeks.
He says that taken
together, "[you] start to come to the conclusion that you have strong
evidence, albeit incomplete, that sarin or a nerve agent has been used in Syria
recently over the last four to five weeks".
Mohammed Khatib's sister, who survived,
was taken to hospital with a distended tongue and frothing at the mouth.
Samples of soil, blood,
urine and hair have been taken. They hold the best clue as to what happened in
Saraqeb. What it will not do is determine who is responsible and for Mohammed
Khatib it is all too late.
"I don't believe
there'll be any response. People are dying, children becoming orphans and women
widows. It's been going on for three years now. There would've been a response
already but there's none."
The UN says almost
80,000 people have been killed in Syria, hundreds since the debate about
chemical weapons began.
For most Syrians the
real issue is not how people were killed, it is death itself; the crowded graveyards,
the inexorable tide of the homeless and the relentless destruction of the
country and what they see as the indifference of the world to their plight.
