Syrian Military Strongly Denies Allegations of Launching Gas Attack in Idlib

The Syrian army “has not and does not use them, not in the past and not in the future, because it does not have them in the first place,” the source told Reuters.

Separately, a Syrian member of parliament, Sharif Shahada, said he believed a chemical arms depot set up and held by the militants in the area may have exploded in the incident, adding that the Syrian government was not in possession of such weapons.

Shahada also accused Turkey of having supplied militants in Syria with chemical arms.

Meanwhile, the Russian military said in a statement that Moscow did not conduct any airstrikes in Idlib province.

The United States and its allies have in the past accused the Syrian military of conducting chemical attacks, while Damascus turned its entire chemical arsenal over to international monitors under a deal negotiated by Russia and the United States back in 2013.

Foreign-backed militants have repeatedly used chemical weapons against Syrian troops and civilians, but the attacks have often been ignored by Western governments.

Syrian forces had also found Saudi and Turkish chemicals in Aleppo that were used by Takfiri terrorist groups to make chemical weapons. Damascus forces also discovered several chemical-weapons workshops in the war-torn country in the past years.

Russia’s Defense Ministry also found poisonous chlorine and white phosphorus in nine samples from Southwestern Aleppo in November 2016.

Russian Defense Ministry’s Spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the UN-backed Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was reluctant to join forces with Russia or send experts to Aleppo, adding that “which does not stop some OPCW members from apportioning blame from afar and ignoring the evidence that chemical weapons are being used against civilians.”

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in the same month that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons refuses to send its experts to Aleppo to check substances used by militants in attacks and the move was “seemingly done under pressure from our Western colleagues”.

“Russian specialists found that militants in Eastern Aleppo used ammunition with poisonous substances, with the ammo targeting Western Aleppo. The collected samples leave no doubt that it’s a toxic agent,” he added.

In December 2016, Syrian authorities had provided the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) with evidence of mustard gas use by militants in Aleppo province.

Syria has been hit with rounds of Western sanctions for years on accusations that its government exercised violence against its own people. The European Union has extended until June 2017 curbs on Syria linked to investment, oil production and trade.