generalspeaking

Death By Stealth

"Are these the terrorists they are talking about, these children? In one hospital, there are 155 people dead. Look at these women and children, entire families: 12 people in one family -- the mother, the father, the children, and the grandfather. We found three buildings, all their inhabitants dead."
Unnamed Syrian medical doctor

"The chances of rescuing the children were limited. They were arriving dead at the medical centre About ten missiles were fired. All the inhabitants within a circle of 200 metres of where they dropped were killed."
Mohammed Al-Said, opposition activist

AFP PHOTO/HO/SHAAM NEWS NETWORK /AFP/Getty Images

This is the latest atrocity committed by a regime against its citizens. When all were asleep, dark had long descended, so too did bombs carrying deadly chemical agents meant to steal life, leaving no symptoms generally associated with brutally violent assaults. Death by stealth; death stealing life from the unaware and the innocent. A series of early-morning attacks on the eastern suburbs of Damascus, long held by the rebels.

The regime's claims of rebel responsibility in the deaths of those civilians have a ring of truth do they not? Rebels attacking the very areas they already hold fast?

As a repeat of Bashar al-Assad's father's chemical attacks in the 1980s, and another Baathist tyrant's attacks on his Iraqi citizens when Saddam Hussein slaughtered five thousand Kurds in Halabja 25 years earlier, the current president of Syria has some way to go, but not too much. He has already outdistanced his father's death toll by almost three times the numbers in the very same rebel-held districts that began this conflict.

Plenty of victims, and no blood. No bullet wounds. No smashed-in faces, broken limbs. No injuries resulting from bombs, guns, knives. "It does seem that some kind of attack did occur and it does seem to have been a poison gas attack in some form", assented Dina Esfandiary, a weapons of mass destruction expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Of the three types of chemical agents in the Syrian arsenal, it seems two, sarin and mustard gas may have been mixed and used here, she has determined. The Syrian chemical nerve gases are of three types; sarin, mustard and VX. Whose symptoms are convulsions, skin blistering and immediate death, respectively.

Attacks had taken place in six suburbs of Damascus. It is not yet clear whether chemical weapons were used in all six areas. According to Rami Abdul-Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights based in London "poisonous gas" was fired from rockets. SANA, the regime official news agency puts the lie to that claim, denying the use of any chemical weapons; reports to the contrary being "baseless".

Rebels in east Damascus had repelled days of assaults by regime forces. These are areas which have been held by the Syrian Free Army for at least a year. One of which, Ghouta, lies on a critical supply route that the regime repeatedly has attempted to retake, to no avail. The most deadly of the chemical weapons barrages took place just there, in Ghouta.

According to the Damascus Media Office, a monitoring centre for the opposition, attacks had taken place in six of the capital's suburbs. They held the initial death toll at 494. "They fulfill their purpose by scaring everyone. We all know that chemical weapons are effective weapons of terror", said the expert on weapons of mass destruction, Dina Esfandiary.

 For the regime, it is mission accomplished. Nothing ventured, little gained. Having ventured they gained further disgraceful ignominy and contempt. But little movement to restrain their activities nonetheless by outside sources looking on as though all the world's powers are helpless to put a stop to the gruesome slaughter.

As long as the rebels and their Sunni Islamist thugs continue to challenge the Alawite regime and its Shia Hezbollah thugs, the innocent will continue to suffer. They will be laid out neatly in rows in improvised morgues, covered with death sheets, spread over with ice to halt decomposition, videos will be taken and photographs issued and displayed for the edification of the world at large. And the innocent pay the toll.

Labels: Atrocities, Chemical Weapons, Conflict, Revolution, Syria

posted by Pieface @ Friday, August 23, 2013