Airstrikes' gas in Syria said likely chlorine

Government copters’ drops kill 1, sicken 40, activists say

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, second from right, and Minister of Defence Jason Kenney, right look out towards active ISIL fighting positions as he visits members of the Advise and Assist mission 40 km west of Erbil, Iraq, on Saturday, May 2, 2015.   (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, second from right, and Minister of Defence Jason Kenney, right look out towards active ISIL fighting positions as he visits members of the Advise and Assist mission 40 km west of Erbil, Iraq, on Saturday, May 2, 2015. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

BEIRUT -- Suspected chlorine gas attacks by Syrian government helicopters injured some 40 people and killed a child in the country's northwest, activists said Saturday, a day after an international chemical weapons watchdog said it was ready to investigate a series of newly claimed attacks.

Videos shared by the Syrian Civil Defense activist group showed medics and residents rushing children to a hospital as they coughed, some gasping for air in Saraqeb, a city in Idlib province. A video from Nareb, another town in the province where a coalition of insurgent groups has made gains in recent days against troops loyal to President Bashar Assad, showed a medic receiving oxygen himself after rescuing people from another attack.

The videos appeared genuine and corresponded to other reporting about the attacks.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, said the attacks overnight Friday injured at least 40 civilians, including children. The Observatory said medical officials in Nareb said a child was killed, though the cause of death was not clear. The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, also reported the suspected chemical attack in Saraqeb.

There was no mention of the attacks in Syrian state media.

While chlorine has many industrial and public uses, as a weapon it can choke victims to death. Most nations banned its use in war in the Geneva Protocol of 1925. The U.S. and other countries have accused Assad's government of repeatedly dropping chlorine from helicopters during Syria's civil war, as no other force is flying them in the conflict. Forces loyal to Assad have blamed rebels for such attacks.

The suspected attacks come a day after The Associated Press obtained a report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons saying a fact-finding team from the group is ready to look into multiple allegations of chlorine attacks in recent months. The Syrian government would need to approve the group's visit.

Activists had reported a similar attack on Saraqeb on Wednesday.

The suspected chemical attacks come as government forces in Idlib province battle a joint insurgent campaign that has punctured the notion that Assad is on his way to defeating the 4-year-old rebellion.

Meanwhile, Syrian rebels shelled government-held districts in the contested northern city of Aleppo on Saturday, killing 22 civilians and wounding 45 in an apparent retaliation for the killing of a leading rebel fighter a day earlier, Syrian state television reported.

The Observatory said rebel shelling on government-controlled areas killed at least 10 people, including three children. It said the numbers are likely to rise.

The discrepancy in casualty figures couldn't be immediately reconciled, but such differences are common in the immediate aftermath of attacks.

The shelling came after the killing Friday of prominent rebel leader Khaled Serag, known as Khaled Hayani, said Abu Riyad, an activist in Aleppo known by his nickname for fear of reprisal.

Riyad said Hayani was shot dead by a sniper. The Observatory confirmed Hayani was killed and said he was one of the first to fight against the Islamic State extremist group, another government opponent, when it moved into the area.

Also Saturday, the Observatory said at least 13 civilians, including six children, were killed when government aircraft struck the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, where the government is in fierce battles with the Islamic State. The Local Coordination Committees reported seven civilian casualties in one location in Deir el-Zour.

U.S.-led strikes' toll

Elsewhere in Syria, the U.S. military said it was looking into an activist group's claim that at least 52 civilians were killed in U.S.-led airstrikes near the border city of Kobani during its campaign against the Islamic State.

The strikes happened Thursday and Friday on the Syrian village of Bir Mahli, the Observatory said. The U.S.-led coalition said Saturday that those strikes destroyed seven Islamic State positions and one of the group's vehicles near Kobani, which Kurdish fighters ultimately pushed the extremists out of after months of intense fighting.

On Saturday, Observatory director Rami Abdurrahman said the strikes hit only civilians in their homes in Bir Mhali, a mixed Kurdish and Arab village, killing 52, including seven children and nine women.

Maj. Curtis Kellogg, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said there was no information to corroborate the Observatory's claims, though the coalition has measures in place to reduce potential collateral damage.

"We currently have no information to corroborate allegations that coalition airstrikes resulted in civilian casualties," Kellogg said. "Regardless, we take all allegations seriously and will look into them further."

Corroborating any account in Syria is extremely difficult, as journalists have been targeted by insurgent groups, including the Islamic State, which has beheaded Western reporters.

Shorsh Hassan, a spokesman for the main Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units, or YPG, in Kobani, said he was not aware of any civilian casualties in the strikes. He said the village, held by Islamic State fighters, was emptied of civilians days before the clashes that preceded the airstrikes. The area has seen heavy fighting between the Kurdish forces and Islamic State militants.

Local journalist and activist Mustafa Bali, who was in a nearby village at the time of the clashes and the strikes, said he had seen only militants in the area around the village before the strikes.

Salem al-Meslet, a spokesman for the Syrian National Coalition, a Western-backed umbrella opposition group, said it appeared that U.S.-led strikes in the village likely killed civilians, though "it is hard at this moment to speak with absolute certainty."

"Available information from activists on the ground, and the fact that the U.S.-led coalition has conducted airstrikes in the area, lend credence to reports that it was a U.S.-led coalition airstrike that caused the civilian casualties," al-Meslet said in a statement. "It is absolutely vital, therefore, that such reports are taken seriously, and a full investigation into the incident is carried out immediately."

Activists previously have claimed that U.S.-led airstrikes have killed civilians, though only a few at a time at most. The Observatory puts the number of civilians killed in the strikes at over 60 killed since the coalition began bombing the Islamic State group last September.

On the Iraqi front

In Iraq's fight against the Islamic State, meanwhile, the extremist group has taken control of large parts of the country's largest oil refinery and has cut supply lines to the 150 or so government troops who are holding out inside, witnesses reported Saturday.

Speaking from inside the facility in the central city of Beiji, an Iraqi officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to a reporter, said government troops were running low on food, water and ammunition. He said the situation was chaotic after a year of nearly unbroken siege.

He said Islamic State fighters control "all the major buildings" and 80 percent of the watchtowers around the facility and had flanked government positions with "snipers and suicide bombers driving heavily armored car bombs."

He appealed for the government in Baghdad to send supplies, ammunition and air cover. "We have been under siege for four days without any major coalition airstrike assistance inside the facility," he said.

The Beiji refinery remains one of the most important economic assets in Iraq, even though it has been shut down since last summer, when Islamic State fighters first began trying to capture it. Before last June, it produced about half Iraq's production of refined products, such as gasoline.

The Iraqi Defense Ministry would not comment on the situation at the refinery, but a member of the governing council for Salahuddin province, which includes Beiji, admitted that Islamic State forces had breached the perimeter, but denied that much of the facility was under their control.

"There are conflicting reports about Daesh's control," the council member, Adnan Ibrahim, said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

He said the key production-control sections of the plant remained in government hands. "The security forces control more than 60 percent of the refinery," he said.

On Friday, the U.S. Central Command said airstrikes had destroyed what it called two Islamic State fighting positions in the previous 24 hours near Beiji.

Elsewhere, Islamic State militants shot to death at least 25 captive Yazidis at a prison camp in northern Iraq, a Yazidi lawmaker said Saturday, the latest mass killing carried out by the extremists targeting the sect.

The killings took place at a prison camp near the city of Tal Afar, some 90 miles east of the Syrian border, legislator Mahma Khalil said.

Khalil said he spoke to four different people with knowledge of what happened inside of the camp, though a reason for the killings still wasn't immediately apparent.

He added that those killed included men, women and the elderly. He said he believes that some 1,400 other Yazidis are still held in that camp.

In other news, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a surprise visit Saturday to Baghdad, pledging to continue Canada's support for the battle against the Islamic State.

The Canadian government has announced $139 million in additional aid to address the refugee crisis around the region precipitated by the fighting, in addition to the $67 million already committed to Iraq.

Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi received Harper in Baghdad. Canada is part of the U.S.-led international coalition supporting the Iraqi military with airstrikes and training.

Also Saturday, a suicide car bombing followed by another car bombing minutes later in Baghdad's popular Karrada neighborhood killed at least 17 people, police said. The bombs struck as restaurants and coffee shops were full of people, they said.

In eastern Diyala province, a roadside bomb killed five women and two children traveling in a minibus, police said. Islamic State fighters were largely driven out of the eastern province earlier this year but still plant roadside bombs.

In Anbar province, three soldiers and three militiamen were killed and nine were wounded when a suicide car bomber drove an explosive-rigged Humvee into their headquarters in the town of Garma, a police officer said.

Medical officials confirmed the casualty figures. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to release the information.

Information for this article was contributed by Sarah El Deeb, Albert Aji, Sinan Salaheddin and Murtada Faraj of The Associated Press and by Mitchell Prothero of Tribune News Service.

A Section on 05/03/2015

Upcoming Events