Assad still has chem weapons
Syria's president Bashar al-Assad deceived United Nations inspectors and still has “hundreds of tonnes” of lethal chemicals stockpiled, the country's former weapons research chief has said.
In 2014, Syria said it had handed over all of its chemical weapons to the UN's Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). At the time, Barack Obama said the stockpile had been “100 percent eliminated”.
But Brigadier-General Zaher al-Sakat has told The Telegraph that Assad's regime did not declare large amounts of sarin and other toxic weapons.
“They [the regime] admitted only to 1,300 tonnes, but we knew in reality they had nearly double that,” said General Sakat, who had been one of the most senior figures in the country's chemical weapons programme. “They had at least 2,000 tonnes. At least.”
Assad's government has been blamed for a suspected sarin gas attack in Idlib province last week in which killed almost 90 people. The attack prompted a retaliatory attack by the US against a Syrian air base, which has sparked heightened tensions between Syria's Russian backers and the US.
But Assad has said the allegation that his government was responsible for the attack was “100 per cent fabrication”.
Meanwhile, thousands of Syrians were stuck in and around Aleppo yesterday as a deal to evacuate fighters and civilians from four towns as part of a coordinated population swap stalled, according to a monitor and activists.
The agreement involves Zabadani and Madaya, two government-besieged towns located near the capital Damascus, and Fouaa and Kefraya in northwestern Idlib province, which have been encircled by Syrian rebels since March 2014.
The transfer is part of a deal brokered by Iran and Qatar that will see more than 10,000 people evacuated and hundreds of prisoners exchanged.
According to the United Nations, at least 4.7 million people are living in hard-to-reach and besieged areas in Syria and are exposed to grave security threats.
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