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Syrian Government and Rebels Trade Blame Over Alleged Chemical Attack

The Syrian government and rebel forces are exchanging blame after a poison gas attack reportedly injured hundreds in the village of Kafr Zeita.

By Adam Chandler
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The Syrian government and rebel forces are exchanging blame after a poison gas attack reportedly injured hundreds in the village of Kafr Zeita.

Details of the attack Friday in Kfar Zeita, a village in Hama province some 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of Damascus, remained sketchy Saturday night.

But online videos posted by rebel activists showed pale-faced men, women and children gasping for breath at a field hospital, suggesting an affliction by some kind of poison in a conflict that's seen hundreds killed by chemical weapons."

The incident has not been independently confirmed as a chemical attack. Over 150,000 people have been killed in Syria's three-year-old civil war, mostly by conventional means. However, the reintroduction of the specter of chemical weapons' use by any party in Syria could have implications given the Obama administration's red line on the issue.

While the red line went unforced following a massive chemical weapons attack in August, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad's chemical weapons arsenal was supposed to have been shipped out of the country by early February. Assad claimed the security situation delayed the implementation of the agreement and the Russian-brokered deadline was not met.

Elsewhere in Syria, an assault on Aleppo continues:

Aleppo became a central front in the Syrian civil war after rebel forces launched a major offensive there almost two years ago.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.