The U.S. has no evidence to confirm reports from aid groups and others that the Syrian government has used the deadly chemical sarin on its citizens, Defense Secretary James Mattis said Friday.
"We have other reports from the battlefield from people who claim it's been used," Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon.
"We do not have evidence of it."
He said he was not rebutting the reports.
"We're looking for evidence of it, since clearly we are dealing with the Assad regime that has used denial and deceit to hide their outlaw actions," Mattis said.
Syrian President Bashar Assad denies that his government has used chemical weapons.
Mattis says it is clear that Assad's government has weaponized and used chlorine gas in the Syrian civil war.
"We're even more concerned about the possibility of sarin use," he said. Sarin is a colorless and tasteless toxin that can cause respiratory failure leading to death.
Last April, the U.S. launched several dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian air base in response to what it called illegal Syrian use of chemical weapons. President Donald Trump said the attack was meant to deter further Syrian use of illegal weapons.
In his remarks Friday, Mattis alluded to the April attack, saying, "So they'd be ill-advised to go back to violating" the international prohibition on the use of chemical weapons.
On Thursday, the Trump administration accused Assad of producing and using "new kinds of weapons" to deliver deadly chemicals. Administration officials said
Trump has not ruled out additional military action to deter chemical attacks or to punish Assad, though 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.
Meanwhile, Turkey continued its advance on a Kurdish enclave in northern Syria, and a barrage of rockets fired at two Turkish border villages from the enclave killed two people and wounded 19 others, Turkish officials said Friday.
The Hatay provincial governor's office issued a statement saying at least six rockets targeted the town of Reyhanli, damaging a home, a workplace and a road close to the marketplace.
Eighteen people were wounded, including two who later died in a hospital.
Three more rockets hit the town of Kilis, northeast of Reyhanli, where at least three people were wounded, Gov. Mehmet Tekinarslan said.
Turkey launched a cross-border offensive into Afrin on Jan. 20 to rout the Syrian Kurdish militia group it says is linked to insurgents fighting inside Turkey.
Friday's deaths raised to six the death toll from rocket attacks on the two towns since then. The victims include a teenage girl and two Syrian refugees.
On the Syrian side of the border, fighting broke out near Afrin as Turkish troops and Turkey-backed opposition fighter tried to advance farther into the Kurdish enclave.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting is concentrated in the village of Bilbleh, adding that Turkish warplanes are conducting airstrikes in the region.
The group also reported that Kurdish fighters struck a vehicle inflicting casualties among Turkey-backed fighters.
Information for this article was contributed by staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 02/03/2018