Syrian medical and civil defense sources told the Reuters news agency that at least four people where asphyxiated, and many suffer from difficulty breathing, following the dropping of barrel bombs filled with gas thought to be chlorine on a district in the city of Aleppo on Wednesday.
Hamza al-Khatib, director of the al-Quds hospital in Aleppo, said the hospital had recorded four deaths and 55 injuries resulting from poisoning with gas. Seven people were still being treated in the hospital.
Khatib added that he was preserving pieces of the injured people’s clothing and shrapnel from the barrel bombs as evidence that could be used for examination and analysis.
Syrian civil defense, which works in areas under opposition control, told Reuters that it had recorded three deaths and 22 injuries after a barrel containing gas thought to be chlorine was dropped on the al-Zabdiyeh district in Aleppo. The nature of the gas could not be independently investigated.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that helicopters had dropped barrel bombs on the Seif al-Dowla and al-Zabdiyeh districts, suffocating a woman and her child.
The Aleppo Media Center published a video recording that it said was of victims of the gas attack: a child and two young people with artificial breathing devices. Two men said that when the barrel bombs fell, there was a strong scent of gas, and that subsequently people started to suffer from breathing and lung problems.
Human rights organizations and the United States have repeatedly accused Moscow of carrying out deadly air strikes against non-military targets, and of standing with regime forces that carry out serious violations against civilians.
At the beginning of this month, Syrian civil defense announced that a helicopter had dropped payloads of poison gas on the town of Saraqeb near the area where a Russian military helicopter was shot down hours earlier.
The civil defense spokesman said that 33 people, mostly women and children, were affected by poison gas in Saraqeb, in Idleb province.
The civil defense published a video on YouTube in which a number of men are shown having difficulty breathing while people wearing civil defense uniforms provide them with oxygen masks.
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
