WASHINGTON -- The U.S. on Thursday accused Syrian President Bashar Assad's government of producing and using new kinds of weapons to deliver deadly chemicals despite committing to abolish its program in 2013, and said the world must find a way to stop it.
President Donald Trump has not ruled out additional military action to deter attacks or punish Assad, administration officials said although they did not suggest any action was imminent. They emphasized that the United States was seeking a new way to hold users of chemical weapons accountable and wanted cooperation from Russia, Assad's patron, in pressuring him to end the attacks.
Raising the alarm about the continued threat, U.S. officials said it was "highly likely" that Assad kept a hidden stockpile of chemical weapons after 2013 that he failed to properly disclose. They said information gathered from recent alleged attacks also suggested that Assad retained what officials described as a "continued production capacity" -- also banned under the 2013 deal.
There were no indications that the Syrian government, after seven years of civil war, had developed new, deadlier chemicals. Rather, the officials said Assad's forces are using the same chemicals -- chlorine and sarin -- but in more sophisticated ways, potentially to evade international accountability by making the origins of attacks harder to trace.
Barrel bombs used earlier in the war to disperse chemicals indiscriminately, for example, have been replaced by ground-launched munitions, officials said. More recent attacks have involved both chlorine, which has nonchemical uses and is easier to acquire, and the more sophisticated chemical sarin, the officials said.
The officials weren't authorized to speak on the record and briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.
They said that in recent years, Assad has also adjusted his tactics to reduce the chances that attacks will be attributed to his forces.
That has made evidence collection more difficult, though the U.S. believes it has a firm understanding of the extent of chemical use in Syria through a combination of intelligence, sample testing by third countries, and social media and other open-source information, the officials said.
Assad's government has denied using chemical weapons, and Russia, its chief ally, has dismissed the reports as attempts to pressure Syria's government or provocations perpetrated by opposition groups.
Syria and Russia have dismissed the conclusions of the Joint Investigative Mission, an expert body set up by the set up by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which determined that Assad's government used chlorine gas in 2014 and 2015 and sarin in April 2017.
Syria's government isn't the only chemical-weapons threat in the region, according to the officials. The Islamic State militant group continues to use them, they said, although the militants' arms are said to be more rudimentary.
Though the Islamic State no longer controls large parts of Syria or Iraq, the officials said the extremist group continues to use sulfur mustard, in artillery shells, and chlorine, delivered by improvised explosive devices. The officials noted that the underlying chemicals are easy to acquire or produce and that the U.S. does not believe the Islamic State has gotten hold of military stockpiles in either Iraq or Syria.
Years of efforts by two U.S. presidents have failed to end the reports on chemical-weapons use in Syria.
Under President Barack Obama, the U.S. stopped short of striking Assad's forces in response but brokered a deal with Russia to rid Syria of its stockpiles. After another alleged attack in April, President Donald Trump ordered a retaliatory missile strike, but 10 months later, the U.S. and international observers say the weapons are still used.
Reports of chemical attacks have continued to stream in from Syria, including as recently as Thursday, when rescue workers in the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Douma reported what they described as a suspected chlorine gas attack that injured several civilians.
The opposition-run Ghouta Media Center reported in a posting on its Facebook page that three people were killed and dozens suffered shortness of breath as a result of surface-to-surface missiles, some of them carrying chlorine gas.
The reports could not be independently verified. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war in Syria via activists on the ground, was unable to confirm the reports. The accounts came after a suspected chemical attack in late January near Damascus that activists and rescue teams said affected nearly 20 civilians.
'CRUSHING' BATTLES TOLD
Also Thursday, battles raged as Kurdish fighters attempted to repel a new advance by Turkish troops and allied Syrian fighters on their encircled enclave in northwestern Syria.
At the same time, Syrian government forces pushed into Idlib province, an opposition stronghold nearby, inching closer to a key highway that connects Damascus and Aleppo, Syria's two largest cities.
The separate offensives have sharply worsened the humanitarian situation in northern Syria. About 15,000 civilians have been displaced inside the Kurdish-controlled enclave Afrin, with no place to run except the district's center, according to U.N. humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland. The figure could not be independently verified.
The U.N. says more than 270,000 people have been displaced in Idlib because of the government onslaught since Dec. 15.
Turkey has mobilized about 10,000 Syrian opposition fighters to fight in its campaign against a Kurdish militant group in Afrin. That campaign, code-named Operation Olive Branch, has drawn protest from the U.S. and France, which consider the Kurdish militia an ally in the war on the Islamic State.
Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency said the Turkish military cleared Bulbul, an area north of Afrin, on Thursday. But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that while the Turkish troops and allied Syrian fighters have reached Bulbul, "crushing" battles were continuing with the Kurdish fighters.
As the war drags on, Egeland said, no medical or food supplies have reached besieged populations in Syria since November and "humanitarian diplomacy seems to be totally impotent."
About 2.9 million people are estimated to have been displaced across Syria in 2017, at a rate of almost 240,000 per month, and Egeland called on Russia, Turkey and Iran to "de-escalate" the crisis.
"We are getting nowhere at the moment," Egeland said Thursday in Geneva. "The situation is screaming for a cease-fire."
Russia has teamed up with fellow Assad backer Iran as well as Turkey in an attempt to forge a settlement in Syria. The Syrian opposition's Higher Negotiating Committee said Thursday that it is ready to back a Russia-brokered constitutional overhaul initiative for Syria, but only if it was led by the United Nations.
The Higher Negotiating Committee boycotted the Syria Congress for National Dialogue held this week in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi, which agreed to the formation of a committee, made up of government delegates and representatives of opposition groups, to discuss the country's postwar constitution.
The meeting did not address the future role of Assad, who U.S. officials have said must be transitioned from power.
Information for this article was contributed by Josh Lederman, Zeina Karam, Philip Issa and Sarah El Deeb of The Associated Press and by Kambiz Foroohar and Justin Sink of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 02/02/2018