TURKEY: A Syrian military defector says President Bashar al-Assad's regime has used sarin gas; an opposition member denies that the rebels were holding four United Nations peacekeepers

Record ID: 276498

  • Title: TURKEY: A Syrian military defector says President Bashar al-Assad's regime has used sarin gas; an opposition member denies that the rebels were holding four United Nations peacekeepers
  • Date: 8th May 2013
  • Summary: ISTANBUL, TURKEY (MAY 7, 2013) (REUTERS) NEWS CONFERENCE BY DEFECTED GENERAL ADNAN SILLO AND SYRIAN OPPOSITION FIGURES JOURNALISTS AT NEWS CONFERENCE (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) DEFECTED SYRIAN GENERAL, ADNAN SILLO, SAYING: "The regime has used sarin many times. On April 29, they used it and then it was used again on April 30. Wounded people were transferred to Bab al-Hawa Hospi
  • Embargoed: 23rd May 2013 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Turkey
  • Country: Turkey
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Conflict,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA3S2R9LL18WKCPQH7TR5GGHG15
  • Story Text: A Syrian military defector on Tuesday (May 7) accused President Bashar al-Assad's regime of using sarin nerve gas during the armed conflict.
    Defected Syrian general Adnan Sillo said the regime had used the gas on several occasions.

    "The regime has used sarin many times. On April 29, they used it and then it was used again on April 30. Wounded people were transferred to Bab al-Hawa Hospital and Al-Rehaneyah Hospital. A woman died due to her injuries from sarin in Al-Rehaneyah," Sillo told a news conference in Istanbul.
    He said 26 people were wounded and three others died in an attack.
    An investigator said on Sunday that U.N. human rights investigators had gathered testimony from casualties of the civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used sarin. But she gave no details as to when or where sarin may have been used.
    A member of the Syrian opposition coalition said Syrian rebels were not holding any U.N. peacekeepers on the ceasefire line between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights after clashes in the area had put them in danger.
    The rebels themselves have said they were holding four Filipono peacekeepers, who were "safe and sound and will be handed over as soon as possible".
    But Hisham Marwah, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council executive committee said that was not the case.
    Syria's two-year uprising has increasingly seeped into sensitive frontiers, threatening to draw other countries closer to a conflict that has already killed more than 70,000 people in Syria.
    U.N. spokeswoman Josephine Guerrero said the peacekeepers were taken at Position 86, near the southern end of the narrow "area of separation" between Syrian and Israeli forces.
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