PARIS - France said Tuesday that it has confirmed that the nerve gas sarin was used “multiple times and in a localized way” in Syria, including at least once by the regime. It was the most specific claim by any Western power about chemical weapons attacks in the 27-month-old conflict.
Britain later said tests it conducted were also positive for sarin.
The French and British findings, based on samples taken from Syria, were announced hours after a United Nations team said it had “reasonable grounds” to suspect small-scale use of toxic chemicals in at least four attacks in March and April.
The U.N. investigators also said Tuesday that they believed thermobaric bombs were used in recent weeks and urged the international community to cut off supplies of weapons that could only result in more civilian casualties.
Thermobaric bombs scatter a cloud of explosive particles before detonating, sending a devastating blast of pressure and extreme heat that incinerates those caught in the blast and sucks the oxygen from the lungs of people in the vicinity. Such weapons were used in March in the struggle for the town of Qusair, the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic reported.
“Syria is in free fall,” Paulo Pinheiro, the chairman of the Commission of Inquiry told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. “Crimes that shock the conscience have become a daily reality. Humanity has been the casualty of this war.”
The panel cited increasing use of indiscriminate weapons, including cluster munitions, barrel bombs and surface-to-surface missiles as evidence of the “flagrant disregard” of government forces for the distinction between combatants and civilians demanded by international law.
“There is a strong element of retribution in the government’s approach, with civilians paying a price for ‘allowing’ armed groups to operate within their towns,” the report said.
“War crimes, crimes against humanity and gross human-rights violations continue apace,” it added, reporting 17 occurrences that could be called massacres between mid-January and mid-May.
The U.N. inquiry was conducted from outside Syria’s borders and was based on interviews with doctors and witnesses of purported attacks and a review of amateur videos from Syria.
The team said solid evidence will remain elusive until inspectors can collect samples from victims directly or from the sites of purported attacks.
Some experts cautioned that the type of evidence currently available to investigators - videos, witness reports and physiological samples of uncertain origin - leaves wide doubts.
At the same time, forensic evidence of alleged chemical-weapons use is fading away with time, and the longer U.N. inspectors are kept out of Syria, the harder it will be to collect conclusive proof, they said.
Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime has refused to allow U.N. investigators into the country to look into purported chemical weapons attacks.
Syria is suspected of having one of the world’s largest chemical-weapons arsenals, including mustard and nerve gas, such as sarin. In recent weeks, the regime and those trying to topple Assad have increasingly made accusations of chemical weapons use but have offered no solid evidence.
In the West, meanwhile, the lack of certainty about such allegations is linked to a political debate over whether the U.S. should get more involved in the Syrian conflict, including by arming those fighting Assad.
President Barack Obama has been reluctant to send weapons to the Syrian rebels, in part because of the presence of Islamic militants among them. Obama has warned that the use of chemical weapons or their transfer to a terrorist group would cross a “red line,” hinting at forceful intervention in such an event.
Yet he has insisted on a high level of evidence, including a “chain of custody,” that can only come from onsite investigations now being blocked by the regime.
In Tuesday’s announcement about sarin, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said his government had analyzed several samples, including some removed from Syria by reporters from the Le Monde newspaper.
He said that there was “no doubt” that at least in one case, the regime and its allies were responsible for the attack.
“We have integrally traced the chain, from the attack, to the moment people were killed, to when the samples were taken and analyzed,” Fabius told the TV station France 2.
He said a line was crossed and that “all options are on the table,” including intervening “militarily where the gas is produced or stored.”
In London, Britain’s Foreign Office said samples from Syria were tested at a government laboratory and the presence of sarin was confirmed. It did not say when or where the samples were obtained.
Britain has evidence suggesting a number of different chemical agents have been used, “sometimes including sarin, sometimes not,” said Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mark Lyall Grant.
White House spokesman Jay Carney, speaking before the British announcement, said the French report is “entirely consistent” with the Obama administration’s own findings, but he added that more work needs to be done to establish who is responsible for the use of the toxic substances and when they were used.
“We need more information,” he said.
The Obama administration said in an April letter to two U.S. senators that the U.S. intelligence community had determined, with “varying degrees of confidence,” that the regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale, specifically the nerve gas sarin.
However, the administration cautioned that the intelligence assessments are not sufficient reason to take action, citing the stakes involved.
In addition to the use of chemical weapons, war crimes including murder, torture, rape and the deliberate targeting of civilian neighborhoods have become “a daily reality,” with both sides responsible for abuses, the U.N. report said, although it attributed blame for most of the violence to Assad’s government.
The report noted evidence that the rebels have carried out summary executions and hostage taking, but it said that “the violations and abuses committed by anti-Government armed groups did not … reach the intensity and scale of those committed by Government forces and affiliated militia.”
The international community and regional powers also are to blame for failing to resolve their differences over how to address the conflict, the report added.
Russian and U.S. officials are to meet in Geneva today to discuss how to bring all the parties together for a peace conference.
However, with Russia threatening to ship potentially game-changing S-300 missiles to the Syrian government and a European Union embargo on arms sales to the rebels set to expire in August, a “diplomatic surge” is urgently needed to bring both parties to the negotiating table, the U.N. report said.
On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin indicated that Russia may not proceed with the contentious delivery of the S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, which have the potential to tilt the balance of power in the region in favor of the regime and its allies, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement.
Speaking at a summit with European leaders in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, Putin said Russia had not yet “implemented” the long-standing contract to supply the S-300 missile system, which has a range of up to 125 miles and would greatly inhibit Israel’s ability to strike targets it deems threateningin Syria, as it has done at least three times this year.
“With regard to the S-300, it is indeed one of the best anti-aircraft complexes in the world, if not the best,” Putin said Tuesday. “It is a serious weapon, of course. We don’t want to disturb the balance in the region.”
Russia has been a key supporter of Assad, protecting his regime from U.N. sanctions and providing it with weapons, despite the twoyear civil war in which more than 70,000 people have been killed.
Putin on Tuesday also criticized the EU’s decision to lift its weapons embargo for Syrian rebels, saying Russia was “disappointed” by the move, which he said ran contrary to international law.
He said Russia would continue to push for a peace conference on Syria, but added that the prospects for convening it have been clouded by the “lack of good will on behalf of the armed opposition.”
In Syria on Tuesday, troops advanced toward the center ofthe strategic town of Qusair near the border with Lebanon and chased rebels from another key district on the edge of Damascus on Tuesday, officials said, solidifying gains that have shifted the balance of power in the regime’s favor in recent weeks.
In the past two months, the Syrian army has moved steadily against rebels in key battleground areas, making advances near the border with Lebanon and considerably lowering the threat to Damascus, the seat of Assad’s government.
Later Tuesday, Syrian state-run TV said troops were now in “full control” of the southwestern part of the town and have “eradicated the remnants of terrorists there.” Information for this article was contributed by Greg Keller, Karin Laub, Zeina Karam, Sylvia Hui, Edith M. Lederer, Vladimir Isachenkov, Sarah El Deeb,Albert Aji, Barbara Surk and staff membersof The Associated Press; by Nick Cumming-Bruce and Alan Cowell of The New York Times; and by Liz Sly and Will Englund of The Washington Post.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/05/2013