271 Syrians draw U.S. sarin-tied sanctions

U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley speaks to the media during the daily briefing in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, April 24, 2017.
U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley speaks to the media during the daily briefing in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, April 24, 2017.

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's administration issued sanctions Monday on 271 people linked to the Syrian agency responsible for producing nonconventional weapons, part of an ongoing U.S. crackdown on what it says was Syrian President Bashar Assad's use of chemical weapons.

The sanctions target employees of Syria's Scientific Studies and Research Center, which the U.S. says partly enables the use of chemical weapons. The U.S. has blamed Assad for an attack earlier this month that killed nearly 90 civilians in rebel-held northern Idlib province.

"The United States is sending a strong message with this action that we will hold the entire Assad regime accountable for these blatant human-rights violations in order to deter the spread of these types of barbaric chemical weapons," Steven Mnuchin, the secretary of the Treasury, said in a statement. "We take Syria's disregard for innocent human life very seriously, and will relentlessly pursue and shut down the financial networks of all individuals involved with the production of chemical weapons used to commit these atrocities."

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He said it was one of the largest such sanctions actions in U.S. history. It more than doubles the number of Syrian individuals and entities whose property has been blocked by the United States and who are barred from financial transactions with American people or companies.

Republicans who had long criticized former President Barack Obama's administration for doing too little to prevent the Assad regime's atrocities also praised the sanctions.

"They represent another stark departure from the Obama administration's dithering on Syria, which only worsened the bloodshed and created a vacuum for ISIS," said Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, referring to the Islamic State group. He said he would push forward with Democrats on legislation to "give the White House more leverage to hold Assad -- as well as his Russian and Iranian backers -- accountable."

After an August 2013 sarin gas attack killed more than 1,000 people in a Damascus suburb, Trump said as a private citizen at the time that the U.S. should "stay away" from the Syrian crisis.

"What will we get for bombing Syria besides more debt and a possible long-term conflict," Trump said on Twitter Aug. 29, 2013. Later he tweeted: "What I am saying is stay out of Syria."

Britain applauded the U.S. action, calling it a strong message that the use of chemical weapons is unacceptable.

"The abhorrent attack on Khan Sheikhoun is a stark reminder that the international community must work together to deter the future use of chemical weapons in any circumstances," Boris Johnson, the British foreign secretary, said in a statement. "Sanctions send a clear signal that actions have consequences and seek to deter others from a similar acts of barbarism."

Assad has strongly denied he was behind the attack, in which reports have said sarin gas was used.

This month, Russia vetoed a Western-backed U.N. resolution that would have condemned the reported use of chemical weapons in Syria and demanded a speedy investigation into the attack. China abstained for the first time, a move the White House billed as a win for their efforts to isolate Russia.

"On Syria, the council failed again this month to respond to Syria's use of chemical weapons," Trump said Monday at a White House meeting of U.N. ambassadors from countries on the Security Council. "A great disappointment. I was very disappointed by that."

The U.S. has gradually been expanding its sanctions program against Syria since 2004, when it issued sanctions targeting Syria for a range of offenses, including its support of terrorism, as well as its occupation of Lebanon, efforts to undermine stability in Iraq and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

More recently, sanctions were expanded in connection with its civil war, now in its seventh year, to target offenses linked to the ongoing violence and human-rights abuses.

Syria agreed in a 2013 agreement brokered by Russia to destroy its chemical weapons arsenal and get rid of material that could be used to resume the manufacture of such weapons.

But U.S. officials have said that this month's attack, in Khan Sheikhoun, indicated that the Assad government still had the capacity to make and use chemical weapons.

On Monday, one official said that assault and at least one other this month suggested that Syria had an ongoing chemical weapons program and called into question declarations the government had made to the contrary.

In a report issued by the National Security Council this month that included a declassified account of the Khan Sheikhoun attack, the White House said U.S. intelligence information had indicated that "personnel historically associated with Syria's chemical weapons program" were at Shayrat airfield in March and on the day of the attack preparing for the sarin assault.

That airfield is believed to have been used by Syrian government warplanes to carry out the attack. Trump ordered an airstrike on the airfield days later.

An official declined to say whether any of those figures were part of the group singled out on Monday, citing the need to protect intelligence sources and methods, but the official asserted that those being blacklisted were believed to be responsible for attacks.

Family reportedly slain

In Syria on Monday, an airstrike killed eight family members, five of them children, as they fled fighting between U.S.-allied Syrian forces and Islamic State militants, according to Syrian activists, who said the strike appeared to have been launched by the U.S.-led coalition.

Al-Qaida's leader meanwhile urged his followers and other militants in Syria to unite and prepare for protracted jihad, or holy war, against what he called an "international satanic alliance," apparently referring to the Syrian government, its ally Russia, and the U.S., all of which are targeting the group.

The family was fleeing fighting in the northern Syrian town of Tabqa when their vehicle was struck, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which said the five children were between 6 months and 15 years old.

The activist-run Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently also reported the airstrike, saying a family was killed.

The US.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, a group that also includes Arab fighters, is trying to expel the Islamic State from Tabqa before moving on to Raqqa, the group's declared capital. Tabqa is 25 miles southwest of Raqqa.

The U.S. and its allies are believed to be the only forces flying missions over Tabqa.

In a recording released late Sunday, al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri called on Syria's various jihadi factions to unite in order to wage guerrilla war.

He cast the Syrian conflict as part of a wider struggle aimed at imposing Islamic rule on the region and beyond.

Al-Qaida's official branch, the Nusra Front, changed its name to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham and formally cut ties with al-Qaida last year, but it is still widely seen as being linked to the global terror network. Its leaders have tended to portray its struggle as being confined to Syria.

Meanwhile, authorities began a sixth round of evacuations on Monday for civilians and fighters from the opposition-held neighborhood of al-Waer in Homs, Syria's third largest city, activists and Syrian state media reported.

Government forces have besieged the neighborhood since 2013, according to the Washington-based monitoring group Siege Watch. Rebels, opposition activists and their families agreed to vacate the district in an agreement signed in March. The government will retake control of the neighborhood after the last of twelve rounds of evacuations are complete, in an expected three to four weeks, according to local media activist Osama Abou Zeid.

He said about 16,000 people are expected to leave the neighborhood instead of reconciling themselves with the government's security services, which have a reputation for barbarity.

An estimated 1,800 people, including some 500 fighters, left Monday, said Abou Zeid. They are being taken to Jarablus, a town on the Turkish border that is under the control of Turkish troops and Syrian opposition forces.

In northern Syria, warplanes struck the town hit by the chemical attack earlier this month.

The airstrikes in Khan Sheikhoun killed at least four people and wounded 10 others, according to the activist-run Thiqa News Agency and Edlib Media Center. It was not immediately clear who carried out the strike.

The Observatory for Human Rights said at least five people, including a child, were killed in the attack on a vegetable market.

Information for this article was contributed by Vivian Salama, Matthew Lee, Jill Colvin, Philip Issa, Maamoun Youssef and Hashem Osseiran of The Associated Press; and by Julie Hirschfeld Davis of The New York Times.

A Section on 04/25/2017

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