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As it happenedended

Syria strikes - as it happened: UN security team shot at in Douma, says chemical weapons watchdog

Inspectors' access to site still being delayed, reports say

Jon Sharman,Samuel Osborne
Wednesday 18 April 2018 07:17 BST
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Corbyn leads debate into Parliament vote on Syria strikes: 'The government is attempting to overturn a democratic advance'

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A UN security team came under fire in Syria while doing reconnaissance for inspectors to visit sites of a suspected chemical weapons attack, and officials said it was no longer clear when the inspectors would be able to go in.

The inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) are in Syria to investigate an April 7 incident in which Western countries and rescue workers say scores of civilians were gassed to death by government forces.

OPCW Director-General Ahmet Üzümcü said the United Nations Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) had decided to carry out reconnaissance at two sites in the town of Douma before the inspectors would visit them.

“On arrival at site one, a large crowd gathered and the advice provided by the UNDSS was that the reconnaissance team should withdraw,” he told a meeting at the watchdog’s headquarters in remarks it later released. “At site two, the team came under small arms fire and an explosive was detonated. The reconnaissance team returned to Damascus.”

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US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis blamed the Syrian government for delays in inspectors reaching the sites and said it has a history of trying to “clean up the evidence before the investigation team gets in.”

“We are very much aware of the delay that the regime imposed on that delegation but we are also very much aware of how they have operated in the past and seal what they have done using chemical weapons,” Mr Mattis said before the start of a meeting with his counterpart from Qatar.

The United States, Britain and France fired missiles at Syrian targets on Saturday in retaliation for the suspected chemical use. They say the arrival of the inspectors is being held up by Syrian authorities who now control the area, and that evidence of the chemical attack may be being destroyed.

Damascus and its ally Moscow deny that any gas attack took place, that they are holding up the inspections or that they have tampered with evidence at the site. Britain’s ambassador to the OPCW Peter Wilson said it was now unclear when the inspectors would be able to reach it.

The rebel group based in Douma announced its surrender hours after the suspected chemical attack, and the last rebels left a week later, hours after the Western retaliation strikes.

The US-led intervention has threatened to escalate confrontation between the West and Bashar al-Assad’s backer Russia, although it has had no impact on the fighting on the ground, in which pro-government forces have pressed on with a campaign to crush the rebellion.

Mr Assad is now in his strongest position since the early months of a seven-year-old civil war that has killed more than 500,000 people and driven more than half of Syrians from their homes.

The OPCW team will seek evidence from soil samples, interviews with witnesses, blood, urine or tissue samples from victims and weapon parts. But, more than a week after the suspected attack, hard evidence might be hard to trace.

An official close to the Syrian government said the UN security team had been met by protesters demonstrating against the US-led strikes.

“It was a message from the people,” said the official. The mission “will continue its work”, the official said.

Douma was the last town to hold out in the besieged eastern Ghouta enclave, the last big rebel bastion near the capital Damascus. Eastern Ghouta was captured by a government advance over the past two months.

Syria’s UN ambassador said on Tuesday the fact-finding mission would begin its work in Douma on Wednesday if the U.N. security team deemed the situation there safe.

The Syrian “White Helmets” rescue organisation, which operates in rebel-held areas, has pinpointed for the OPCW team the places where victims of the suspected attack are buried, its head Raed Saleh said on Wednesday.

Douma hospital workers who stayed in the town after the army recaptured it have said that none of the people injured on the night of the attack were exposed to chemical weapons.

Reuters

Samuel Osborne18 April 2018 14:07
Jon Sharman18 April 2018 14:10

The death of a Russian journalist who fell from his balcony should be investigated, the German government has said.

A foreign ministry official said the government has no independent information about what happened to Maxim Borodin, who wrote about the deaths of Russian mercenaries in Syria. 

Russian news website Novy Den said Mr Borodin, one of its reporters, died in a hospital on Sunday, three days after falling from his fifth-floor balcony in Yekaterinburg. 

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Adebahr told reporters in Berlin that "we are in favor of investigating and solving this case now," but declined to speculate on his death. 

Ms Adebahr added "it's not a good development if the space for critical and independent press in Russia gets smaller" and the issue is regularly raised with Moscow."

Samuel Osborne18 April 2018 14:21

The UN security team that came under fire in Douma earlier today has been forced to return to base in Damascus, a UN official said.

Chemical weapons inspectors from the OPCW are still awaiting an opportunity to visit the site of an alleged poison gas attack on 7 April.

Jon Sharman18 April 2018 15:05

An update from the OPCW on what happened to the UN security team earlier, released within the last few minutes.

The team visited two areas in Douma, the OPCW's director-general said.

Ahmet Üzümcü added: "On arrival at Site 1, a large crowd gathered and the advice provided by the [UN's security department] was that the reconnaissance team should withdraw.

"At Site 2, the team came under small arms fire and an explosive was detonated. The reconnaissance team returned to Damascus.

"At present, we do not know when the [fact-finding] team can be deployed to Douma. Of course, I shall only consider such deployment following approval by the UNDSS, and provided that our team can have unhindered access to the sites.

"This incident again highlights the highly volatile environment in which the [team] is having to work and the security risks our staff are facing."

Security for the sites the OPCW's investigators plan to visit is being controlled by the Russian military police, Mr Üzümcü said.

Jon Sharman18 April 2018 15:44

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called snap presidential and parliamentary elections on 24 June, saying the country's military operations in neighbouring Syria and Iraq "have made it mandatory to remove the election issue from our agenda".

The next presidential vote will trigger an executive presidency, which affords the premier extended powers. Mr  Erdoğan narrowly won a referendum on the issue last year.

The summer election is more than a year earlier than was planned and Mr Erdoğan and his ministers had previously dismissed suggestions of early polls. Rescheduling the elections means they will take place under a state of emergency first declared in July 2016 following a failed coup. 

Harriet Agerholm18 April 2018 16:50

Hundreds of Syrian refugees who fled to Lebanon have returned to their home country today.

Nearly 500 people, including children and the elderly, left the Shebaa area in southeast Lebanon in 15 buses for the Beit Jinn district in Syria, southwest of Damascus, which was recaptured from rebels by pro-government forces in December. The buses reached the Lebanese border on Wednesday afternoon before crossing into Syria.

"We had no news about our hometown. My family and I are happy to be going back," said Younes Othman, 31, who was a farmer in Syria and is returning after four years in Lebanon.

The convoy was organised by the Lebanese authorities, Lebanon's state news agency NNA reported. The UN refugee agency UNHCR, in a statement, said it was not involved in organising "these returns or other returns at this point, considering the prevailing humanitarian and security situation in Syria".

More than half of Syria's pre-war population have fled their homes since the outbreak of war in 2011, including more than a million who sought refuge in tiny Lebanon, where they now make up more than a quarter of the population.

Some leading Lebanese politicians, including President Michel Aoun, have called for Syrian refugees to return to calmer parts of Syria, but the United Nations says they should not be forced to go back.

Reuters

Harriet Agerholm18 April 2018 17:17

Russia's military says a Syrian security employee was wounded in an attack on a UN team as it was on a security mission to the site of the suspected chemical weapons attack.

Maj-Gen Yuri Yevtushenko said "a Syrian security employee received light wounds during the crossfire. No Russian servicemen were at the site of the incident." 

Harriet Agerholm18 April 2018 17:35

The United Nations says its special envoy for Syria is undertaking intensive high-level consultations with senior officials in key countries on options for "a meaningful relaunch" of UN-facilitated political negotiations. 

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Staffan de Mistura embarked on the consultations following a meeting Monday with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the sidelines of the Arab League summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia "and in view of current tensions". 

Russia's UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said on Tuesday air trikes on Syrian chemical sites on 7 April by the US Britain and France had set back political negotiations to end the even-year conflict. 

Mr de Mistura held consultations with the Arab League secretary-general, foreign ministers including from Egypt, Jordan and Iraq and the European Union high representative, and joined Mr Guterres at meetings with the king, crown prince and foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, Mr Dujarric said.

The UN special envoy for Syria also plans to meet with Turkish, Russian and Iranian officials as well as officials from several European counties and the US. 

Harriet Agerholm18 April 2018 18:01

A Syrian man accused of trafficking Syrian and Lebanese nationals to the US border was sanctioned on Wednesday by the US Treasury, which said it was intent on disrupting his "prolific human smuggling operations" around the globe.

The Treasury placed Nasif Barakat and his gang, based in Homs, Syria, on a list of people and entities whose assets under US control can be frozen. The action generally prohibits US citizens from dealing with Mr Barakat or his group.

The designation of the group as a transnational criminal organisation "is an important step toward disrupting Barakat's prolific human smuggling operations in Syria and around the world," Sigal Mandelker, Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement.

Mr Barakat and his gang operate a global network of traffickers that smuggle foreign nationals to the United States for an average price of about $20,000 (£14,100), the Treasury said in a statement.

Trafficked people are provided with fraudulent or counterfeit documents, often including passports from European or other countries, the Treasury said. They often travel across Lebanon, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Latin American countries before arriving at the Southwest US border, it said.

Reuters

Harriet Agerholm18 April 2018 18:19

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