Tag Archives: Chemical Weapons

Airport video shows North Korean embassy official with Kim Jong Nam murder suspects

Indonesian Siti Aisyah who is on trial for the killing of Kim Jong Nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korea's leader, is escorted as she leaves at the Department of Chemistry in Petaling Jaya, near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – A North Korean embassy official and a manager of Air Koryo, the national airline, met suspects wanted for the killing of Kim Jong Nam shortly after the murder, according to video recordings shown at the trial in Kuala Lumpur on Monday.

Two women, Indonesian Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong from Vietnam, and four men who are still at large, have been charged in the murder of the half-brother of the country’s leader, using banned chemical weapon VX at Kuala Lumpur airport on Feb. 13.

Defense lawyers have said Siti Aisyah and Huong were duped into thinking they were playing a prank for a reality TV show.

The four suspects, who were caught on airport camera talking to the women before they attacked Kim Jong Nam, were identified as North Koreans for the first time on Monday, a month since the trial began.

Three of them were seen meeting a North Korean embassy official and the Air Koryo official, both unidentified, at the main airport terminal within an hour of the attack, lead police investigator Wan Azirul Nizam Che Wan Aziz told the court.

North Korea has vehemently denied accusations by South Korean and U.S. officials that Kim Jong Un’s regime was behind the killing.

Kim Jong Nam, who was living in exile in Macau, had criticized his family’s dynastic rule of North Korea and his brother had issued a standing order for his execution, some South Korean lawmakers have said.

Footage played in the courtroom showed the Air Koryo official helping the three suspects at an airport check-in counter. He was later seen arranging a flight ticket for the fourth suspect too, Wan Azirul said.

Wan Azirul identified the men as North Koreans Hong Song Hac, Ri Ji Hyon, Ri Jae Nam and O Jong Gil, citing intelligence findings by the special branch of the Malaysian police.

Wan Azirul said he investigated and took statements from both the embassy and the Air Koryo official.

“They explained that the reason they were there was to assist every North Korean individual or citizen who boarded a flight to leave the country,” he told the court.

The North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur did not respond to Reuters’ telephone calls and emails to seek comment.

The sensational murder unraveled once-close ties between Malaysia and North Korea.

Malaysia was forced to return Kim Jong Nam’s body and allow the return home of three North Korean men wanted for questioning and hiding in the Kuala Lumpur embassy, in exchange for the release of nine Malaysians stuck in Pyongyang.

Wan Azirul said police intelligence also provided information on a fifth suspect identified as Ri Ji U, who was also “suspected to have the real name James”, based on images and photographs taken from Siti Aisyah’s phone.

 

(Reporting by Rozanna Latiff; Additional reporting by Joseph Sipalan; Editing by Praveen Menon and Clarence Fernandez)

 

Russia sets out why it thinks U.N. wrongly accused Syria over sarin attack

A man breathes through an oxygen mask, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia on Thursday set out why it disputed U.N. and Western allegations that the Syrian government had been behind a deadly chemical attack on the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in April that killed dozens.

A report sent to the United Nations Security Council last week concluded that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government was responsible for the attack, which prompted a U.S. missile strike against a Syrian air base.

Russia, whose air force and special forces have been supporting the Syrian army, said at the time there was no evidence to show Damascus was responsible and the chemicals that killed civilians belonged to rebels, not Assad’s government.

On Thursday, with the aid of maps, satellite footage and charts, Moscow set out why it believed the Syrian government had been unfairly maligned.

A Russian Defence Ministry official told a media briefing that the Syrian Su-22 jet accused of dropping the chemical bomb was not physically close enough to the attack site to have been involved.

“Thus, I believe the information provided cannot confirm the use of chemical weapons in Khan Sheikhoun in the form of an aviation bomb dropped from a Syrian Air Force Su-22 jet,” the RIA news agency quoted the official, whom it did not name, as saying.

Mikhail Ulyanov, head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control, told the same briefing that U.S. accusations that Russia had encouraged the use of chemical weapons in Syria were ungrounded, RIA reported.

“It was hysteria and a completely open attempt to discredit Russia with rather primitive dirty means,” Ulyanov was quoted as saying.

The White House on Wednesday admonished Russia after it vetoed a United Nations plan to continue its ongoing investigation into the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013 under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States. The Syrian government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons during the country’s more than six-year civil war.

 

(Reporting by Jack Stubbs; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

 

U.S., Russia set for likely U.N. row over Syria toxic gas inquiry

FILE PHOTO: A United Nations (U.N.) chemical weapons expert, wearing a gas mask, holds a plastic bag containing samples from one of the sites of an alleged chemical weapons attack in the Ain Tarma neighbourhood of Damascus, Syria August 29, 2013. REUTERS/Mohamed Abdullah/File Photo

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United States said on Wednesday it would push the United Nations Security Council to renew within days an international inquiry into who is to blame for chemical weapons attacks in Syria, setting the stage for a likely showdown with Russia.

Russia has questioned the work and future of the joint inquiry by the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), and said it would decide whether to support extending the mandate after investigators submit their next report.

The inquiry, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM), is due to report by Oct. 26 on who was responsible for an April 4 attack on the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun that killed dozens of people.

“We would like to see it renewed prior to the report coming out,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley told reporters.

“The Russians have made it very clear that should the report blame the Syrians suddenly they won’t have faith in the JIM. If the report doesn’t blame the Syrians then they say that they will. We can’t work like that,” Haley said.

A separate OPCW fact-finding mission determined in June that the banned nerve agent sarin had been used in the Khan Sheikhoun attack, which prompted the United States to launch missiles on a Syrian air base.

Haley said she would circulate a draft resolution to the 15-member Security Council later on Wednesday to renew the mandate for the JIM, which is due to expire in mid-November. It was unanimously created by the council in 2015 and renewed in 2016.

A resolution must get nine votes in favor and not be vetoed by any of the council’s five permanent members – Russia, China, the United States, Britain and France – in order to pass.

The JIM has found that Syrian government forces were responsible for three chlorine gas attacks in 2014 and 2015 and that Islamic State militants used mustard gas.

Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013 under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States. The Syrian government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons during a civil war that has lasted more than six years.

Mikhail Ulyanov, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s non-proliferation and arms control department, said on Friday there were “serious problems” with the work of the inquiry.

“In order to judge if it deserves an extension of the mandate, we need to see the report … and assess it,” Ulyanov told a briefing at the United Nations to present Moscow’s view on the “Syrian chemical dossier.”

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Paul Simao)

Syria investigator del Ponte signs off with a sting

Carla del Ponte, member of the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic attends a news conference into events in Aleppo at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 1, 2017.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Veteran prosecutor Carla del Ponte signed off from the United Nations Syria investigation on Monday by criticizing the U.N. Security Council and telling Syria’s ambassador his government had used chemical weapons.

The former Swiss attorney general, who went on to prosecute war crimes in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia, said in August she was resigning from the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria because of a lack of political backing.

Bidding farewell to the U.N. Human Rights Council, which set up the Commission of Inquiry six years ago, Del Ponte said she had quit out of frustration.

“We could not obtain from the international community and the Security Council a resolution putting in place a tribunal, an ad hoc tribunal for all the crimes that are committed in Syria,” she said.

“Seven years of crime in Syria and total impunity. That is not acceptable.”

Del Ponte told a Swiss newspaper last month enough evidence existed to convict President Bashar al-Assad of war crimes.

Her departure leaves only two remaining commissioners of the inquiry, Karen Koning AbuZayd and the chairman, Paulo Pinheiro, who said that eventually, a great many people would have to answer “as to why they did not act sooner to stop the carnage”.

“The deadlock at the Security Council on Syria is reprehensible and, at times, bewildering,” he told the Human Rights Council.

Leaving the council, del Ponte told Syria’s ambassador that she had been right to quickly reach the conclusion that Assad’s government had used chemical weapons during an attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in April.

“It was me, mister ambassador,” she said.

“I said that in my opinion and based on the elements we already had, the Syrian government was responsible. Today we have the confirmation after an official commission’s inquiry. So now, we ask for justice, we ask justice for those victims.”

 

(Reporting by Tom Miles and Cecile Mantovani; editing by Andrew Roche)

 

Israel hits Syrian site said to be linked to chemical weapons

By Sarah Dadouch and Jeffrey Heller

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel attacked a military site in Syria’s Hama province early on Thursday, the Syrian army said, and a war monitoring group said the target could be linked to chemical weapons production.

The air strike killed two soldiers and caused damage near the town of Masyaf, an army statement said. It warned of the “dangerous repercussions of this aggressive action to the security and stability of the region”.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war, said the attack was on a facility of the Scientific Studies and Research Centre, an agency which the United States describes as Syria’s chemical weapons manufacturer.

It came the morning after U.N. investigators said the Syrian government was responsible for a sarin poison gas attack in April.

Syria’s government denies using chemical arms. In 2013 it promised to surrender its chemical weapons, which it says it has done.

The Observatory said strikes also hit a military camp next to the center that was used to store ground-to-ground rockets and where personnel of Iran and its ally, the Lebanese Hezbollah group, had been seen more than once.

An Israeli army spokeswoman declined to discuss reports of a strike in Syria.

Syria’s foreign ministry has sent letters to the U.N. Security Council protesting at Israel’s “aggression” and saying anyone who attacked Syrian military sites was supporting terrorism, Syrian state TV reported.

In an interview in Israel’s Haaretz daily last month on his retirement, former Israeli air force chief Amir Eshel said Israel had hit arms convoys of the Syrian military and its Hezbollah allies nearly 100 times in the past five years.

Israel sees red lines in the shipment to Hezbollah of anti-aircraft missiles, precision ground-to-ground missiles and chemical weapons.

ISRAELI SIGNAL?

The reported attack took place on the 10th anniversary of Israel’s destruction of a nuclear reactor in Syria.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to address the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 19, and is widely expected to voice Israel’s concern over what it sees as attempts by Iran to broaden its military foothold in Syria and threats posed by Hezbollah

Israeli officials have said that Russia, another Assad ally, and Israel maintain regular contacts to coordinate military action in Syria.

Some Israeli commentators saw the latest strike – a departure from the previous pattern of attacks on weapons convoys – as a show of Israeli dissatisfaction with the United States and Russia.

Last month, Netanyahu met Russian President Vladimir Putin, but came away without any public statement from Moscow that it would curb Iranian influence.

Hezbollah and Israel fought a brief war in 2006 in which more than 1,300 people died. Both have suggested that any new conflict between them could be on a larger scale than that one.

Hezbollah has been one of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s most important allies in the war and last month its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said he had recently traveled to Damascus to meet the Syrian president.

Israel is conducting military exercises in the north of the country near the border with Lebanon.

Yaakov Amidror, a retired Israeli general and former national security adviser, told reporters he assumed Thursday’s strike was linked to Nasrallah’s visit to Damascus.

“Weapons systems have been transferred from this organization (the Scientific Studies and Research Centre) into the hands of Hezbollah during the years,” he said.

HEZBOLLAH

In May, an official in the military alliance backing Assad said that Hezbollah drew a distinction between Israel striking its positions in Syria and at home in Lebanon. “If Israel strikes Hezbollah in Lebanon, definitely it will respond,” the official said.

The Syrian army statement said the Israeli strike came at 2.42 a.m. (2342 GMT) from inside Lebanese airspace. It said it had been launched in support of Islamic State.

Jets flying over Lebanon overnight broke the sound barrier and Lebanese media reported that Israeli warplanes had breached Lebanese airspace.

The Observatory reported that seven people were killed or wounded in the strike.

“The factory that was targeted in Masyaf produces the chemical weapons and barrel bombs that have killed thousands of Syrian civilians,” Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, said in a tweet.

The strike sent a message that Israel would not let Syria produce strategic weapons, would enforce its own red lines, and would not be hampered by Russian air defense systems in Syria, he added.

The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria said on Wednesday a government jet dropped sarin on Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province in April, killing more than 80 civilians, and that government forces were behind at least 27 chemical attacks.

(Reporting by Angus McDowall and Sarah Dadouch in Beirut and Jeffrey Heller, Ori Lewis, Dan Williams and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; writing by Angus McDowall; editing by Angus MacSwan and Andrew Roche)

Syrian government forces used chemical weapons more than two dozen times: U.N.

Catherine Marchi-Uhel of France, newly-appointed head of the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) attends a news conference on Syria crimes at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland September 5, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Syrian forces have used chemical weapons more than two dozen times during the country’s civil war, including in April’s deadly attack on Khan Sheikhoun, U.N. war crimes investigators said on Wednesday.

A government warplane dropped sarin on the town in Idlib province, killing more than 80 civilians, the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria said, in the most conclusive findings to date from investigations into chemical weapons attacks during the conflict.

The Commission also said U.S. air strikes on a mosque in the village of Al-Jina in rural Aleppo in March that killed 38 people, including children, failed to take precautions in violation of international law.

The weapons used on Khan Sheikhoun were previously identified as containing sarin, an odourless nerve agent. But that conclusion, reached by a fact-finding mission of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), did not say who was responsible.

“Government forces continued the pattern of using chemical weapons against civilians in opposition-held areas. In the gravest incident, the Syrian air force used sarin in Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib, killing dozens, the majority of whom were women and children,” the U.N. report said, declaring the attack a war crime.

In their 14th report since 2011, U.N. investigators said they had in all documented 33 chemical weapons attacks to date.

Twenty seven were by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, including seven between March 1 to July 7. Perpetrators had not been identified yet in six early attacks, they said.

The Assad government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons. It said its strikes in Khan Sheikhoun hit a weapons depot belonging to rebel forces, a claim dismissed by the U.N. investigators.

That attack led U.S. President Donald Trump to launch the first U.S. air strikes on a Syrian air base.

A separate joint inquiry by the U.N. and OPCW aims to report by October on who was to blame for Khan Sheikhoun.

The U.N. investigators interviewed 43 witnesses, victims, and first responders linked to the attack. Satellite imagery, photos of bomb remnants and early warning reports were used.

‘GRAVELY CONCERNED’ ABOUT COALITION STRIKES

The independent investigators, led by Paulo Pinheiro, also said they were “gravely concerned about the impact of international coalition strikes on civilians”.

“In al-Jina, Aleppo, forces of the United States of America failed to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians and civilian objects when attacking a mosque, in violation of international humanitarian law,” the report said.

A U.S. military investigator said in June that the air strike was a valid and legal attack on a meeting of al Qaeda fighters. It was believed to have killed about two dozen men attending the group’s meeting and caused just one civilian casualty.

The American F-15s hit the building adjacent to the prayer hall with 10 bombs, followed by a Reaper drone that fired two Hellfire missiles at people fleeing, the U.N. report said.

“Most of the residents of al-Jina, relatives of victims and first responders interviewed by the Commission stated on that on the evening in question, a religious gathering was being hosted in the mosque’s service building. This was a regular occurrence.”

“The United States targeting team lacked an understanding of the actual target, including that it was part of a mosque where worshippers gathered to pray every Thursday,” it said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by John Stonestreet)

Exclusive: Indonesian militants planned ‘dirty bomb’ attack – sources

Exclusive: Indonesian militants planned 'dirty bomb' attack - sources

By Tom Allard and Agustinus Beo Da Costa

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesian militants planned to detonate a radioactive dirty bomb, security sources said, highlighting the rising ambitions of extremists to wreak destruction in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation.

But experts cast doubt on their expertise, equipment and chances of success.

The plot was foiled when police raided homes and arrested five suspects in Bandung, West Java, last week, the sources with direct knowledge of the plot said. After the raids, police spoke of a plan to explode a “chemical” bomb but provided no other details.

The plot comes as Indonesia grapples with an influx of militants deported from other countries and the fallout from the Islamic State-led siege in the southern Philippines city of Marawi that regional leaders and analysts worry has energized militants across Southeast Asia

The three counter-terrorism sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the militants had hoped to transform low-grade radioactive Thorium 232 (Th-232) into deadly Uranium 233 (U-233).

The highly radioactive uranium would be combined with the powerful home-made explosive triacetone triperoxide (TATP) to create a “nuclear bomb”, according to an instruction manual used by the militants and reviewed by Reuters.

In fact, the device would be, at best, a radiological dispersal device or dirty bomb that could spray radioactive material when the conventional bomb exploded.

A spokesman for Indonesia’s national police, Inspector General Setyo Wasisto, declined to confirm or deny the plot to construct the device, but said it would have been more potent than the two bombs made from TATP that killed three police in Indonesia’s capital Jakarta in May.

“If this bomb was finished, it would have had a more destructive impact than the bomb made from ‘Mother of Satan’,” he said, using the nickname for TATP.

“It could burn anything and make it hard for people to breathe.”

Thorium-232 can be transformed into Uranium-233 but requires the Thorium to absorb a neutron, a process that needs powerful irradiation, generally from a nuclear reactor, according to three analysts contacted by Reuters and the website of the World Nuclear Association, which represents reactor vendors and nuclear engineers, among other industry stakeholders.

The militants’ manual advised an X-Ray machine or microwave be used instead.

“X rays would not have enough punch to overcome the binding energy of the Thorium atoms,” said Peter Hayes, an expert in radiological devices from the Nautilus Institute, in an email.

“And, no, you can’t cook Th-232 to make U-233 in a microwave and, if you could, you would have a painful and rapid death from the radioactive nature of the co-present U-232 produced alongside U-233.”

One senior Indonesian counter-terrorism source said the Bandung-based cell had bought a large amount of a household item and had begun to extract the Thorium. Reuters has chosen not to name the item.

“They needed three weeks. It was still only one week (into the process when police raided),” the source said.

“A MUSLIM’S DUTY”

Indonesia has suffered a series of mostly small attacks by extremists over the past 18 months, although police have disrupted many more.

Indonesian terrorism analyst Rakyan Adibrata fears militants have been inspired by the events in Marawi, where IS fighters continue to occupy part of the city despite a three-month offensive by Philippines force to re-take it.

“They don’t have the ability to occupy a city like has happened in Marawi, but they want to do something big that pleases their bosses in Islamic State,” said Adibrata.

A radiological bombing could fit the bill, although Adibrata said that it was highly unlikely that the Bandung cell had either “the equipment or the knowledge” to succeed.

Most of Indonesia’s recent attacks have involved members of Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), a pro-IS alliance of Indonesian militants. Many have been directed from Syria by an Indonesian national and JAD leader Bahrun Naim, according to police.

Naim is identified as the author on the front page of the 47-page Indonesian-language bomb instruction manual – named “Nuclear for Dummy” (sic) – and posted on a blog that has since been taken down.

“Mastering weaponry is essentially every Muslim’s duty,” it says.

“This paper, we hope, also can motivate the Muslim mujahideen to learn nuclear science easily and apply it.”

Last week, police said the militants had been working off Naim’s manual, but did not disclose its contents.

According to police, the suspected Bandung plotters were members of JAD and were considering targets like the presidential palace in Jakarta and police headquarters in Bandung and the capital.

Two of the five suspects are Indonesian migrant workers deported from Singapore and Hong Kong this year for posting radical Islamist material on social media.

They spent a month or less in a deradicalization shelter before joining up with the other militants, sources told Reuters.

About 177 Indonesian militants have been deported from other countries this year, according to Adibrata, citing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

(Reporting by Tom Allard and Agustinus Beo Da Costa Additional reporting by Stefanno Reinard; Editing by Ed Davies and Nick Macfie)

North Korea shipments to Syria chemical arms agency intercepted: U.N. report

North Korea shipments to Syria chemical arms agency intercepted: U.N. report

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Two North Korean shipments to a Syrian government agency responsible for the country’s chemical weapons program were intercepted in the past six months, according to a confidential United Nations report on North Korea sanctions violations.

The report by a panel of independent U.N. experts, which was submitted to the U.N. Security Council earlier this month and seen by Reuters on Monday, gave no details on when or where the interdictions occurred or what the shipments contained.

“The panel is investigating reported prohibited chemical, ballistic missile and conventional arms cooperation between Syria and the DPRK (North Korea),” the experts wrote in the 37-page report.

“Two member states interdicted shipments destined for Syria. Another Member state informed the panel that it had reasons to believe that the goods were part of a KOMID contract with Syria,” according to the report.

KOMID is the Korea Mining Development Trading Corporation. It was blacklisted by the Security Council in 2009 and described as Pyongyang’s key arms dealer and exporter of equipment related to ballistic missiles and conventional weapons. In March 2016 the council also blacklisted two KOMID representatives in Syria.

“The consignees were Syrian entities designated by the European Union and the United States as front companies for Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC), a Syrian entity identified by the Panel as cooperating with KOMID in previous prohibited item transfers,” the U.N. experts wrote.

SSRC has overseen the country’s chemical weapons program since the 1970s.

The U.N. experts said activities between Syria and North Korea they were investigating included cooperation on Syrian Scud missile programs and maintenance and repair of Syrian surface-to-air missiles air defense systems.

The North Korean and Syrian missions to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The experts said they were also investigating the use of the VX nerve agent in Malaysia to kill the estranged half-brother of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un in February.

North Korea has been under U.N. sanctions since 2006 over its ballistic missile and nuclear programs and the Security Council has ratcheted up the measures in response to five nuclear weapons tests and four long-range missile launches.

Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013 under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States. However, diplomats and weapons inspectors suspect Syria may have secretly maintained or developed a new chemical weapons capability.

During the country’s more than six-year long civil war the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has said the banned nerve agent sarin has been used at least twice, while the use of chlorine as a weapon has been widespread. The Syrian government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Tom Brown)

Global inquiry aims to report on Syria sarin attack by October

A civil defence member breathes through an oxygen mask, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – An international inquiry aims to report by October on who was to blame for a deadly sarin gas attack in Syria in April, the head of the probe said on Thursday, as he appealed for countries to back off and stop telling investigators how to do their work.

While Edmond Mulet, head of the joint United Nations and Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) inquiry, did not name any countries, diplomats said Russia regularly pressured the investigators.

“We do receive, unfortunately, direct and indirect messages all the time, from many sides, telling us how to do our work,” Mulet told reporters after briefing the U.N. Security Council.

“Some of those messages are very clearly saying if we don’t do our work according to them … they will not accept the conclusions,” he said. “I appeal to all … let us perform our work in an impartial, independent and professional manner,” he said, adding the results would be presented in October.

Syrian-ally Russia has publicly questioned the work of the inquiry, which was created by the Security Council in 2015, and said the findings cannot be used to take U.N. action and that the Syrian government should investigate the accusations.

The inquiry has so far blamed Syrian government forces for three chlorine gas attacks in 2014 and 2015 and Islamic State militants used mustard gas in 2015. In response to those findings Western powers tried to impose U.N. sanctions on Syria in February but this effort was blocked by Russia and China.

The Syrian government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons.

Investigators are currently looking at two cases – the exposure of two Syrian women to sulfur mustard in an apparent attack in Um Hosh, Aleppo last September and a deadly April 4 sarin attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun that prompted the United States to launch missile strikes on a Syrian air base.

In both cases an OPCW fact finding mission has already determined that chemical weapons were used. Western governments have blamed the Syrian government for the Khan Sheikhoun attack, which killed dozens of people. Syria has denied any involvement.

Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013 under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Chemical weapons watchdog says sarin used in April attack in Syria

FILE PHOTO: A man breathes through an oxygen mask as another one receives treatments, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah

By Anthony Deutsch

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The world’s chemical weapons watchdog said the banned nerve agent sarin was used in an attack in northern Syria in April that killed dozens of people, a report from a fact-finding team seen by Reuters on Thursday showed.

The report was circulated to members of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague, but was not made public.

The attack on April 4 in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in northern Idlib province was the most deadly in Syria’s civil war in more than three years. It prompted a U.S. missile strike against a Syrian air base which Washington said was used to launch the strike.

After interviewing witnesses and examining samples, a fact- finding mission (FFM) of the OPCW concluded that “a large number of people, some of whom died, were exposed to sarin or a sarin-like substance.

“It is the conclusion of the FFM that such a release can only be determined as the use of sarin, as a chemical weapon,” a summary of the report said.

“Now that we know the undeniable truth, we look forward to an independent investigation to confirm exactly who was responsible for these brutal attacks so we can find justice for the victims,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said in a statement on Thursday.

A joint United Nations and OPCW investigation, known as the JIM, can now look at the incident to determine who is to blame, she said.

The JIM has found Syrian government forces were responsible for three chlorine gas attacks in 2014 and 2015 and that Islamic State militants used mustard gas.

Western intelligence agencies had also blamed the government of Bashar al-Assad for the April chemical attack. Syrian officials have repeatedly denied using banned toxins in the conflict.

The mission was unable to visit the site itself due to security concerns and will not attempt to get there, the head of the OPCW was said to have decided.

Syria joined the chemicals weapons convention in 2013 under a Russian-U.S. agreement, averting military intervention under then U.S. President Barack Obama.

The United States said on Wednesday the Syrian government appeared to have heeded a warning this week from Washington not to carry out a chemical weapons attack.

Russia, the Syrian government’s main backer in the civil war, warned it would respond proportionately if the United States took pre-emptive measures against Syrian forces after Washington said on Monday it appeared the Syrian military was preparing to conduct a chemical weapons attack.

(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Janet Lawrence)