BEIRUT - The Syrian government and Syrian rebels traded accusations about an attack in the northern province of Aleppo on Tuesday in which each side in the country’s two-year conflict said the other had used chemical weapons.
But neither side presented clear documentation to support its claim, and two U.S. officials said there was no evidence to suggest that any chemical weapons had been used. A Defense Department official said the claims should be treated with caution, if not outright skepticism.
The first report came from the Syrian state news agency, SANA, which reported that terrorists, its term for armed rebels, had fired a rocket “containing chemical materials” Tuesday into the Khan al-Assal area of Alep-po province, killing 16 people and wounding 86. It later raised the death toll to 25.
Deputy Foreign Minister Faysal Mekdad said 31 people were killed.
The news agency displayed photographs of what it said were the victims, but there was no immediate indication in the photographs that the people had suffered burns or skin discoloration indicative of a chemical attack, or that chemical quarantine measures had been taken.
A senior rebel commander and spokesman Qassem Saadeddine later accused the government of using chemical weapons in the attack, citing reports of breathing difficulties and bluish skin among victims, but they admitted that the reports were secondhand and they could provide no documentation.
Each side in Syria’s conflict has an incentive to accuse the other of using chemical weapons. U.S. President Barack Obama has said that a chemical attack by President Bashar Assad’s government would cross a “red line” that could prompt U.S. military intervention.
And the Syrian government seeks to portray its opponents as extremists who are a threat to regional stability. Israel has said it would intervene to stop chemical weapons from slipping out of the Syrian government’s control and into the hands of either the rebels or Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group allied with the Syrian government. Use or seizure of chemical weapons by rebel forces would embarrass the United States, as Obama has said he will not stand in the way of allies’ efforts to increase military aid to the rebels.
The Syrian rebel forces are not known to possess chemical weapons, while U.S. officials say the government harbors large stockpiles of them. Syria has generally neither confirmed nor denied their existence, but last year Jihad Makdissi, then the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Syria would use them only to repel a foreign attack, not against its own people.
There has long been a fear on all sides - in the Syrian government, in neighboring Israel and among the rebels’ Western backers - that rebelgroups could seize chemical weapons, but it is unclear whether any such weapons have been loaded onto rockets or missiles for use, or whether the rebels have the technical ability to fire them.
Rebel factions have accused the government of using chemical weapons many times, but there have been no confirmed cases. The term “chemical weapons” has sometimes appeared to be used loosely to include not just deadly nerve agents like sarin gas but also tear gas and other nonlethal irritants used for crowd control.
The Foreign Ministry of Russia, Assad’s most powerful international backer, indicated that it was taking the government’s claim seriously, calling the reported use of chemical weapons by the opposition an “extremely dangerous development” and a new reason to refocus energy on finding a political solution to the conflict.
A Syrian official said on state television that the Aleppo attack would be reported to human-rights organizations and to countries supporting the rebels.
A Reuters photographer was quoted in a report by the news agency as saying that he had visited victims in Aleppo hospitals and that they were suffering breathing problems.
“I saw mostly women and children,” said the photographer, who Reuters said it could not identify by name out of concern for his safety.“They said that people were suffocating in the streets and the air smelt strongly of chlorine.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group, said witnesses had heard over walkie-talkies that 26 people were killed, including 16 government soldiers and 10 civilians, after a rocket landed on Khan al-Assal. Activists said the government had tried to hit the police academy there -which had recently been taken by rebel forces - with a Scud missile, but it accidentally fell on a government-controlled area instead.
In Washington, the White House cast doubt on claims that the opposition had used chemical weapons and said it was evaluating the possibility that the government had used them.
“We’re looking carefully at allegations of C.W. use, chemical weapons use,” said Jay Carney, the White House press secretary. “The use of chemical weapons would be totally unacceptable.”
If Assad’s government has used such weapons, he added, “there would be consequences, and they would be held accountable.”
Carney would not say specifically what the consequences would be.
He said the administration was “deeply skeptical” of the assertions by the government of Assad that the opposition had mounted a chemical attack.
“We have no evidence to substantiate the charge that the opposition has used chemical weapons,” he said.
Carney warned Assad against using such claims as a “pretext or cover” to justify his own use of them.
Likewise at the State Department, a spokesman dismissed the Syrian government’s claim as an effort to distract from its use of longrange Scud missiles against civilians.
The spokesman, Victoria Nuland, said the United States was looking into rebel claims that the government had used chemical weapons and tried to blame its opponents.
Previous administration statements on the subject leave little room to avoid a U.S. response.
“Today I want to make it absolutely clear to Assad and those under his command: The world is watching,” Obama said in a speech in December at the National Defense University in Washington. “The use of chemicalweapons is and would be totally unacceptable. If you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons, there will be consequences, and you will be held accountable.”
Hillary Rodham Clinton, then secretary of state, said: “This is a red line for the United States. I am not going to telegraph in any specifics what we would do in the event of credible evidence that the Assad regime has resorted to using chemical weapons against their own people. But suffice it to say, we are certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur.”
In other developments, Syria’s opposition coalition elected Ghassan Hitto, a little-known American-educated technology manager, to head an interim government to administer areas seized by rebels from Assad’s troops.
In his first speech after his election, Hitto ruled out dialogue with the regime.
“We confirm to our people that there is no place for dialogue with the Assad regime,” he told members of the opposition Syrian National Coalition in Istanbul.
He said the interim government will be based in rebel-held territories in northern Syria, and he urged international recognition for the new entity.
Mouaz al-Khatib, head of the Syrian National Coalition, said in Istanbul that the prime minister would develop his own program, first by trying to organize the revolutionary local councils established inside Syria.
He acknowledged that the new government faces challenges, adding that “the country has collapsed.”
“The Syrian people have reached a stage of oppression, humiliation and destruction of infrastructure, so any positive effort now will present very positive steps,” he said.
Information for this article was contributed by Anne Barnard, Isabel Kershner, Peter Baker, Michael R. Gordon, Eric Schmitt, Hwaida Saad, C.J. Chivers and Rick Gladstone of The New York Times; by Albert Aji, Ben Hubbard, Zeina Karam, Barbara Surk, Vladimir Isachenkov, Bradley Klapper, Donna Cassata, Richard Lardner and Mike Corder of The Associated Press; and by Babak Dehghanpisheh, Ahmed Ramadan, Wiliam Branigin and Anne Gearan of The Washington Post.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/20/2013