Confirmation of the use of chemical weapons during the attack of the Syrian regime in the Duma in 2018

The murderous attack on the Syrian city of Douma, in April 2018, committed by Bashar Al Assad, used chlorine, although there is no evidence of the use of nerve agents. This was determined Friday by the global regulator of chemical weapons in a final report on the incident.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW, for its acronym in English) stated that there were "reasonable grounds to conclude that the use of a toxic chemical took place on April 7, 2018".

"This toxic chemical contains reactive chlorine"adds the report.

Western powers, led by the United States, accused the regime of the Syrian president Bashar Al Assad for the attack and responded with air strikes against military installations.

Friday's findings confirm the interim report issued in July on the attack, The doctors said that he had killed forty people when a cylinder of toxic gas had fallen on the roof of a building.

The report does not mention those responsible for the attack as it was not the task of the OPCW at the time, although the control body gave him permission to investigate the responsibility for all chemical attacks in Syria until 2014.

A team of inspectors from The OPCW has taken more than a hundred samples when they had access to the city several weeks after the attack. The report of the agency based in The Hague states that its findings are the result of "Witness testimonials, badysis results of environmental and biomedical samples, toxicological and ballistic badyzes of experts".

"Two yellow industrial cylinders dedicated to gas under pressure" were found instead, says the report, one of which landed on the block of flats and crashed on it. It is "possible that the bottles are at the origin of substances containing reactive chlorine".

Russia, which supports the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, he quickly rejected the OPCW report, claiming that it had been "organized" by Syrian volunteers known as White Helmets.