[ad_1]
BEIRUT, Lebanon – Syria on Sunday called on the United Nations to condemn its rebel foes after an alleged attack on unknown chemicals in the city of Aleppo sent dozens of suffocating victims to hospitals.
Doctors reported a flood of patients with respiratory problems, inflamed eyes and other symptoms after a Saturday bomb attack, which Syrian and Russian officials blamed on the rebels.
SANA, the Syrian press service, said that more than 100 people had been affected by the attack, without causing any deaths. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a surveillance group based in Britain, published slightly lower figures. A spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense said that 46 people, including eight children, had been exposed to chemicals.
It was not known immediately who had launched the attack Saturday nor what substance had been used. The rebel movement in Syria is a patchwork of factions without central command. Some rebel groups have denied the government's accusations.
"We can not know the types of gas, but we suspected chlorine and treated patients on that basis because of the symptoms," Zaher Batal, president of the Aleppo Medical Association, told Reuters.
None of the Syrian rebel groups possesses powerful neurotoxic agents such as sarin, but they could have used conventional weapons such as chlorine to give chemical effect to their explosions.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry on Sunday called on the UN Security Council to condemn what it called "terrorist crimes" and to take "deterrent and punitive measures against nations and regimes that support and fund terrorism".
Russia, which sent troops and military advisers to support Mr Assad also blamed the attack on the rebels.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman General Igor Konashenkov told reporters in Moscow on Sunday that the military had estimated preliminary estimates that rebels from the neighboring province of Idlib had fired shells. filled with chlorine.
General Konashenkov said that the Russian army had sent chemists to the site of the attack in Aleppo to investigate an artillery strike that had released a "toxic substance".
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has stated that fighter jets hit rebel territory in northwestern Syria on Sunday, the first time since Russia and Turkey agreed to create a buffer zone in Syria. September.
The group said the air strikes had hit the western outskirts of Aleppo town near Idlib, Reuters news agency reported.
