AFP
US Secretary of State John Kerry on August 26 called the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government “moral obscenity” and said that the attack on UN inspectors a few hours earlier and other Syrian actions showed that the Bashar al-Assad regime has something to hide.
Kerry said that US President Barack Obama was considering a response.
“What we saw in Syria last week should shock the conscience of the world. It defies any code of morality,” Kerry said in a televised statement on Monday.
The Secretary’s televised statement came hours after a team of UN chemical weapons inspectors were attacked on their way to areas of Damascus that were affected by the attack that took place on August 21.
The inspectors had arrived at the start of last week to examine another three separate cases of alleged use of nuclear weapons in Syria’s raging civil war. They were attacked by snipers earlier today while on their way to one of the areas attacked last wek in the outskirts of Damascus.
“Attacking the area, shelling and systematically destroying evidence is not the behaviour of a government that has nothing to hide. The regime’s belated decision to allow access is too late… to be credible,” Mr Kerry said and added that the US has additional information about the attack that it will make public in the coming days.
Earlier, Britain and France indicated that the west might act against Syria without UN Security Council approval for humanitarian reasons. Fellow Security Council members China and Russia seem unwilling to give the go-ahead for such action.
During the weekend NGO Medecins Sans Frontiers said that three hospitals they support in Damascus treated more than 3,000 people with symptoms consistent with those of a chemical weapons attack and that 355 of those had died.
More than 100,000 people have been since March 1991 in Syria’s civil war while more than one million children have been displaced. neurope