Syrian opposition activists have posted photographs and video that they say shows an improvised chlorine bomb to back up claims that Bashar al-Assad’s forces used chemical weapons in two attacks last week.
Both sides said chlorine gas – a deadly agent widely used in World War I – had been used. The gas, which has industrial uses, is not on a list of chemical weapons that Assad declared to the global chemical weapons watchdog last year for destruction.
It is a so-called dual-use chemical, which would have to be declared to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a spokesman said.
On Sunday, activists from the “Syrian Revolution in Kfar Zeita” posted video footage and pictures of an unexploded canister with the chemical symbol for chlorine, Cl2, on its side which they said was found in the village.
Eliot Higgins, a respected UK-based researcher who trawls daily through online videos of Syria’s civil war to verify weapons in them said the videos did appear to show an industrial chlorine cylinder.
“It looks like they (the government) have taken an industrial chlorine cylinder, put it in a improvised barrel bomb and dropped it out of a helicopter,” he told Reuters.
The yellow paint on the cylinder complies with international standards on industrial gas color codes indicating it contains chlorine, he said.
A U.N. inquiry found in December that sarin gas had likely been used in the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Ghouta, where hundreds of people were killed.
The Ghouta attack sparked global outrage and a U.S. threat of military strikes, which was dropped after Assad pledged to destroy his chemical weapons.
Syria has destroyed or surrendered 65.1 percent of the 1,300 metric tons (1 metric ton = 1.1023 tons) of chemical weapons it reported possessing but must increase the pace if it is to meet deadlines it agreed to, the global chemical weapons watchdog said on Monday.
Syria has until June 30 to completely abandon its program but is running several weeks behind schedule.
Syria’s three-year civil war has killed more than 150,000 people, a third of them civilians, and caused millions to flee.