Reuters/Beirut
Opposition activists accused President Bashar al-Assad's forces of a new poison gas attack in the Syrian capital yesterday, posting footage of four men being treated by medics.
They said the chemical attack, the fourth the opposition has reported this month, was in the Harasta neighbourhood.
Reuters could not independently verify the footage or the allegation due to restrictions on reporting in Syria.
Activists posted a video on YouTube yesterday of four men being treated with oxygen. A voice off-screen gave the date and said Assad's forces used "poison gas in Harasta". It did not say if there were fatalities.
The face of one of the men appeared to be covered in vomit. He was shown shaking and moaning as doctors treated him.
The voice off-screen said chemical weapons were also used in Harasta on Friday.
A UN inquiry found in December that sarin gas had likely been used in Jobar in August and in several other locations, including in the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Ghouta, where hundreds of people were killed.
The inquiry was only looking at whether chemical weapons were used, not who used them. The Syrian government and the opposition have accused each other of using chemical weapons during the three-year-old civil war. Both sides have denied it.
The Ghouta attack caused global outrage and a US threat of military strikes, dropped after Assad pledged to destroy his chemical weapons arsenal.
But the Syrian government failed to meet a February 5 deadline to move all of its declared chemical substances and precursors, some 1,300 tonnes, out of the country. Syria has since agreed to remove the weapons by late April.
More than 150,000 people have been killed in the civil war, which began as peaceful protests against Assad's rule, a third of them civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Millions have fled the country.
When opposition activists reported that helicopters had dropped chlorine gas on the rebel-held village of Kfar Zita on Friday and Saturday, US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power told ABC's "This Week" the attack was so far "unsubstantiated".
On Sunday, activists posted photographs and video they said showed an improvised chlorine bomb to back up claims that Assad's forces used chemical weapons in Kfar Zita, which the government blamed on rebels.
France seeks ICC probe of crimes
France will table a proposal before the UN Security Council authorising the International Criminal Court to investigate crimes against humanity in Syria, French ambassador to the UN Gerard Araud said on Tuesday.
Araud told reporters that France hoped to introduce the resolution in the next few weeks, following a presentation to council members of a gruesome dossier containing thousands of photos showing detainees who had been starved or tortured in prisons run by the Syrian regime.
“We are going to try to obtain authorisation for the ICC to act,” Araud said.
“We now have proof,” he added, referring to the dossier of evidence compiled by “Caesar,” the codename given to a defector who captured the images before fleeing Syria.
