グータ化学攻撃

背景

グータ地区はダマスカスの南に位置する人口の密集した郊外で、リフ　ディマッシュク県に所属する。グータ地区はスンニ派の地区である。市民戦争の初期から、東グータの市民はほとんど反体制派であった。 反体制派は2012年までに東グータのほとんどを占領し、ダマスカスの一部を切り分けた。 Muadamiyat al-Sham in Western Ghouta had been under government siege since April 2013.　グータは化学兵器による攻撃の以前から、政府軍によるミサイル攻撃による攻撃が絶えず続いていた。化学攻撃が行われた週はシリア政府がダマスカスの郊外を占領するために攻勢に出ていた。
この攻撃は当時のアメリカ大統領バラク・オバマが2012年8月20日の「レッドライン」発言のちょうど一年後であった。オバマ大統領はその発言の中で「我々はアサド体制に対して、また他国に関しても同じだが、はっきりとした立場をもっており、それは我々にとって大量の化学兵器の輸送、使用は越えてはならないレッドラインであり、もしそれが見つかった場合、私はこれまでとは違った対処を考える（直訳：私の方程式を変える）だろう。」と述べている。
シリアは当時化学兵器禁止条約に署名していなかった。「レッドライン」発言の後、グータ地区の攻撃の以前から、化学兵器による攻撃が4回あったことが疑われていた。

カーン・アル・アサル化学攻撃

カーン・アル・アサル化学攻撃は2013年3月19日に起こった。シリア北部のアレッポの地区であり、政府の管轄下にあったカーン・アル・アサルは、サリンを含んだロケットに攻撃された。シリア人権監視団によると、この攻撃による犠牲者は最低で16人の政府軍兵士と10人の市民を含む26人にのぼった。 シリア政府は後に国際連合に対し、1人の兵士19人の市民が死亡し、17人の兵士と107人の市民が負傷したと報告した。地元の病院の医師はシリア軍の兵士が死傷者の処置に当っているのを目撃したと述べている。
シリア政府は化学攻撃があった当日に国際連合安全保障理事会に対しその攻撃について報告した。
翌日、シリア政府は国連による専門的で公正な調査を依頼した。その依頼を受けて、国連事務総長の潘基文は国連事実調査団を設立した。この調査団は"国連によるシリア・アラブ共和国の化学兵器使用の疑いに関する調査団"と名付けられた。
シリア政府は後にカン・アル・アサル以外の地区についての国連の調査を拒否した。
2013年4月23日、"ニューヨーク・タイムズ"はイギリスとフランスの政府が国連事務総長に対し、シリア政府がアレッポ、ホムス、ダマスカスおいて化学兵器を使用した証拠があることを機密文書にて送ったと報じた。イスラエルもまた、シリア政府が3月19日にアレッポとダマスカスの近郊で化学兵器を使用したと主張している。
4月24日、シリアは国連調査団のシリアへの入国を拒否した。ただし、国連政事事務次長のジェフレイ・フェルトマンはそれでも調査の遂行は妨げられないだろうと述べている。
アメリカ合衆国国防長官のチャック・ヘーゲルは4月25日に、米情報機関はアサド政権が小規模のサリンを使用した可能性が高いことを示していると述べた。 しかしながら、ホワイトハウスは、情報機関の査定の確証を得るためには "さらに多くの"調査が必要と述べている。

独立国際調査委員会による調査

国際連合人権理事会は、シリア・アラブ共和国に対する独立国際調査委員会によるシリア市民戦争中の人権侵害についての調査を2011年8月22日に行った。調査の項目の一つとして化学兵器の使用があった。2013年の6月前半において、調査団は五番目の報告書において、４回の攻撃において毒性をもつ化学物質の限定的な使用があったとする合理的証拠が認められた
が、"使用された化学物質の正確な種類と、入手経路や主犯者の同定"のためにさらなる証拠が必要であると述べられている。
6月22日、国際連合調査委員会の主任であるパウロ・ピンヘイロは、米・英・仏から提供された証拠からはシリアの化学攻撃が誰によって行われたかを判定することができなかったと述べている。

米国による調査

2013年6月13日、アメリカ合衆国政府は公の声明として、アサド政府がシリア反政府軍に対して化学兵器の限定的な使用を行い、100から150人を殺害したと結論したと述べた。
アメリカ当局によるとこの攻撃ではサリンが用いられたと述べている。
国家安全保障担当補佐官ベン・ローズ はこのことがシリアがオバマが2012年8月に表明した"レッドライン"を超えたことになるかどうかは述べていない。ローズは「大統領は化学兵器の使用によりこれまでと異なる対応を考えるだろうと言ったがそれが現実のものとなった。」と述べた。フランス政府は独自の調査によりアメリカの調査結果を確かめた。

ロシアによる調査

ロシアの外務大臣セルゲイ・ラブロフは「ダマスカスで化学兵器が使用されたというアメリカの訴えは、確実な証拠に基づかないものだ。」と述べた。"
ラブロフはさらにシリア政府は反体制派に対しすでに軍事的優位性を保っており、化学兵器を使用する動機がないと述べた。

攻撃

攻撃はダマスカス郊外の反体制派が支配する互いに16km離れた２つの独立した地区で行われた。

東グータの攻撃

最初の攻撃は2013年8月21日の2:30 a.m.に東グータのダマスカス東の反体制派が支配する郊外で行われた。
　この地区は反体制派がジョルダンから武器を輸送する経路であり、数ヶ月に渡ってシリア政府軍とヒズボラからの攻撃を受けていた。
最低8つ、そして推定では12のロケットがザマルカ内とアイン・タルマの付近の1500x500mの領域に着弾した。
ロケットは全て即席で作られた同じタイプで、それぞれ50-60リットルのサリンを含む容積があると見積もられた。ロケットエンジンは類似した型のもので指標としては122 mm GRAD 無誘導地対地ロケットと同じ型のものであり、化学弾頭と安定化フィンについては手製のものであった。
[
ザマルカとアイン・タルマで取得されたサンプルの鑑識の結果) found at least traces of sarin in 14 of the 17 cases. 17のサンプルのうち4つが"非常に高い濃度"のサリンが検出された。

西グータ攻撃

二回目の攻撃は8月21日午前5:00に西グータで行われた。モダミヤ情報局に務めていた目撃者によると、彼は8月21日の早朝にモダミヤの２つの地区に7つのロケットが落ちたのを
目撃したと述べている。彼の証言によると4つのロケットがラウダモスクの隣に落ち、3つがカウエ通りとゼイトウネ通りの間に落ちた。また、ロケットは全て同じタイプだった。彼が居た場所はラウダモスクから500メートルほど離れている。
西グータの攻撃では化学弾頭は見つからなかったが、ロケットのうちの一つは122 mm GRAD 無誘導地対地ロケットと同じ型のエンジンであり、このロケットは破片榴弾、白リン弾、サリンを含む化学弾頭を搭載することができる。 西グータで取得された13の環境サンプルからは、サリンは検出されなかった。しかし、その３つからはその"分解物もしくは副生成物"が検出された。

化学兵器の使用能力

攻撃が行われた当時、シリアは化学兵器禁止条約に署名していなかった。化学兵器禁止条約は化学兵器の生産、貯蓄、輸送、使用を禁止するものである。ただしシリアは1968年に1925年に施行されたジュネーブ条約には加盟している。ジュネーブ条約では窒息性、毒性のある毒ガスの使用を禁止している。2012年にシリアは公に化学兵器と生物兵器を所有しており、外国の攻撃を受けた場合は使用すると述べている。
フランスの情報機関によると、シリア科学研究機関(SSRC)は戦争で用いる毒物を生成する能力を持っており、"部門450"と呼ばれる部所が化学兵器の弾頭への注入および化学兵器の貯蓄、安全管理を担っているだろうと述べている。 2013年の9月、フランスの情報機関はシリアの化学兵器ストックを1000トンと見積もった。その中にはイペリット、VX、そして数百トンのサリンが含まれる。"
イギリスの合同情報委員会は反体制派はこの規模の攻撃を行う能力が無いと述べ、攻撃について反体制派の関与の可能性を公に否定した。 
シリア・アラブ共和国の化学兵器使用に関する調査のための国連調査団を率いたスウェーデンの科学者Åke Sellströmは反体制派が毒物を兵器化する能力があったとは考えにくいと述べている。
しかし一方で、彼は攻撃の首謀者は分からないと述べている。
AP通信によれば、"化学・生物兵器の専門家の意見は比較的一致しており、それは数百人の人を殺害したグータの化学攻撃を行う能力があるのは、ミサイルの運搬性能やサリンに関する情報にアクセスできる軍隊組織に唯一限られることである"と述べている。

初期の主張

反体制派とシリア政府の両者とも2013年8月21日にダマスカス郊外で化学攻撃が行われたと述べている。反体制派はシリア政府がこの攻撃を行ったと主張し、シリア政府はこの攻撃は外国の関与によるものと述べた。

反体制派の主張

攻撃のあった当日、シリア国際評議会の首長ジョージ・サブラはドウマ、ジョバル、ザマルカ、アルビン、アイン・タルマ東部の郊外に毒ガスを積んだ砲弾が降り注いだことにより1300人が殺されたと述べている。
シリア自由軍の最高軍評議会のスポークスマンクアッシム・サデディーンは「国連の会合や政治的表明から何の具体的行動も望めないことに人びとは落胆している。」と述べた。シリア国民連合首相のアハマド・ジャルバは"虐殺が起こった場所"に国連調査団を派遣するよう要請し、早急に国際連合安全保障理事会の会合をこの攻撃に関して開くよう要請した。シリア人権監視団はこの攻撃はシリア政権によるものとみなし、潘基文、国際連合事務総長に対し、"シリア政府に対して彼が持てる限りの圧力をかけること"を要請した。
翌日、シリア国民連合のスポークスマンであるカハルド・アル・サレフは6人の医者が患者の治療に当たった後死んだが、死んだ救急隊員は未だ数えられていないと語った。

Government claims

Syria's Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs, Qadri Jamil, said foreign fighters and their international backers were to blame for the attack. Syrian state television, SANA, said the accusations were fabricated to distract a team of UN chemical weapons experts which had arrived three days before the attacks. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said the claims that his government had used chemical weapons would go against elementary logic and that "accusations of this kind are entirely political."

UN investigation

On 18 August 2013, three days before the attack, a UN mission headed by Åke Sellström arrived in Damascus with permission from the Syrian government to investigate earlier alleged chemical weapons use. On the day of the attack, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed "the need to investigate [the Ghouta incident as] soon as possible," hoping for consent from the Syrian government. The next day, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay urged government and opposition forces to allow an investigation and Ban requested the government provide immediate access. On 23 August, clashes between rebel and government forces continued in and around Ghouta, government shelling continued and UN inspectors were denied access for a second day. White House officials were convinced that the Syrian government was trying to hide the evidence of chemical weapons use by shelling the sites and delaying their inspection. Ban called for a ceasefire to allow the inspectors to visit the attack sites. On 25 August the government and various rebel factions agreed to a ceasefire for five hours each day from 26 to 29 August.
Early in the morning of 26 August several mortars hit central Damascus, including one that fell near the Four Seasons Hotel where the UN inspectors were staying. Later in the day the UN team came under sniper fire en route to Moadamiyah in western Ghouta (to the southwest of central Damascus), forcing them to return to their hotel and replace one of their vehicles before continuing their investigation four hours later. The attack prompted a rebuke from Ban toward the fighters. After returning to Moadamiyah the UN team visited clinics and makeshift field hospitals, collected samples and conducted interviews with witnesses, survivors and doctors. The inspectors spoke with 20 victims of the attacks and took blood and hair samples, soil samples, and samples from domestic animals. As a result of the delay caused by the sniper attack, the team's time in Moadamiyah was substantially shortened, with the scheduled expiry of the daily cease-fire leaving them around 90 minutes on the ground.
On 28 and 29 August the UN team visited Zamalka and Ein Tarma in Eastern Ghouta, east of central Damascus, for a total time of five-and-a-half hours. On 30 August the team visited a Syrian government military hospital in Mazzeh and collected samples. The mission left Syria early on August 31, promising to return to complete the original objective to investigate the previously alleged attack sites. The Syrian government wanted the mission to stay and investigate them at that time.

UN Ghouta Area report

The UN report on the investigation into the Ghouta chemical attacks was published on 16 September 2013. The report stated: "the environmental, chemical and medical samples we have collected provide clear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used in Ein Tarma, Moadamiyah and Zamalka in the Ghouta area of Damascus." UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the findings "beyond doubt and beyond the pale,” and clear evidence of a war crime. "The results are overwhelming and indisputable," he said. Ban stated a majority of the blood samples, environmental samples and rockets or rocket fragments recovered tested positive for sarin. The report, which was "careful not to blame either side," said that during the mission's work in areas under rebel control, "individuals arrived carrying other suspected munitions indicating that such potential evidence is being moved and possibly manipulated." The UN investigators were accompanied by a rebel leader:
A leader of the local opposition forces ... was identified and requested to take 'custody' of the Mission ... to ensure the security and movement of the Mission, to facilitate the access to the most critical cases/witnesses to be interviewed and sampled by the Mission and to control patients and crowd in order for the Mission to focus on its main activities.
The British UN Ambassador stated that the report's lead author, Åke Sellström, said the quality of the sarin used in the attack was higher than that used by Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war, implying a purity higher than the Iraqi chemical weapons program's low purity of 45–60%. (By comparison, Aum Shinrikyo used nearly pure sarin in the 1994 Matsumoto incident.)

Responses

According to Human Rights Watch, hundreds of kilograms of sarin were used in the attack, which it said suggested government responsibility, as opposition forces were not known to possess significant amounts of sarin.
The Russian government dismissed the initial UN report after it was released, calling it "one-sided" and "distorted." On 17 September, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated his government's belief that the opposition carried out the attacks as a "provocation." The United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Angela Kane said the inspection team would review Russia's objections.
An August 2013 Scientific American article described difficulties that could arise when attempting to identify the manufacturer of sarin from soil or tissue samples.
An Iranian chemical weapons expert, Abbas Foroutan, said in October 2013 that the UN should publish more details about the investigation than were provided in the report, including victims' pulse rates and blood pressure and their response to the atropine treatment, the victims' levels of acetylcholinesterase (sarin is an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor) and more technical details on the lab testing process.

UN Human Rights Council report

The 7th Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, a different group than the UN fact-finding mission, stated the sarin used in the Ghouta attack bore the "same unique hallmarks" as the sarin used in the Khan al-Assal attack. The report, dated 12 February 2014, also indicated that the perpetrators likely had access to the chemical weapons stockpile of the Syrian military. These conclusions were based on the fact-finding mission's evidence, as the Commission of Inquiry did not conduct its own investigation of either chemical attack.

Aftermath

The continuous fighting has severely limited the quality of medical care for injured survivors of the attack. A month after the attack, approximately 450 survivors still required medical attention for lingering symptoms such as respiratory and vision problems. By early October 2013, the 13,000 residents of Moadhamiya, one of the places targeted in the August attack, had been surrounded by pro-government forces and under siege for five months. Severe malnourishment and medical emergencies become pressing as all supply lines had stopped. Care for chronic symptoms of sarin exposure had become "just one among a sea of concerns."
As countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom debated their response to the attacks, they encountered significant popular and legislative resistance to military intervention. In particular, British Prime Minister David Cameron's request to the House of Commons to use military force was declined by a 285–272 margin. UK government policy subsequently focused on providing humanitarian assistance inside Syria and to refugees in neighboring countries.
Within a month of the attacks, Syria agreed to join the Chemical Weapons Convention and allow all its stockpiles to be destroyed. The destruction began under OPCW supervision on 6 October 2013. On 23 June 2014, the last shipment of Syria's declared chemical weapons was shipped out of the country for destruction.  By 18 August 2014, all toxic chemicals were destroyed aboard the US naval vessel MV Cape Ray.
Nine months after the attack, there is evidence that mothers from the affected areas are giving birth to children with defects and as stillborn.

Witness statements and victim symptoms

Syrian human rights lawyer Razan Zaitouneh, who was present in Eastern Ghouta, stated, "Hours [after the shelling], we started to visit the medical points in Ghouta to where injured were removed, and we couldn't believe our eyes. I haven't seen such death in my whole life. People were lying on the ground in hallways, on roadsides, in hundreds." Several medics working in Ghouta reported the administration of large quantities of atropine, a common antidote for nerve agent toxicity, to treat victims.
Doctors Without Borders said the three hospitals it supports in Eastern Ghouta reported receiving roughly 3,600 patients with "neurotoxic symptoms" over less than three hours during the early morning of 21 August. Of those, 355 died. The Local Coordination Committees of Syria claimed that of the 1,338 victims, 1,000 were in Zamalka, of which 600 bodies were transferred to medical points in other towns and 400 remained at a Zamalka medical center. Some of the fatalities were rebel fighters. The deadliness of the attack is believed to have been increased due to civilians reacting to the chemical attack as if it was typical government bombardment. For conventional artillery and rocket attacks, residents usually went to the basements of buildings, where in this case the heavier-than-air sarin sank into these below-ground, poorly ventilated areas. Some of the victims died while sleeping.
Abu Omar of the Free Syrian Army told The Guardian that the rockets involved in the attack were unusual because "you could hear the sound of the rocket in the air but you could not hear any sound of explosion" and no obvious damage to buildings occurred. Human Rights Watch's witnesses reported "symptoms and delivery methods consistent with the use of chemical nerve agents." Activists and local residents contacted by The Guardian said that "the remains of 20 rockets [thought to have been carrying neurotoxic gas] were found in the affected areas. Many [remained] mostly intact, suggesting that they did not detonate on impact and potentially dispersed gas before hitting the ground."
Doctors Without Borders also reported seeing a "large number of victims arriving with symptoms including convulsions, excessive saliva, pinpoint pupils, blurred vision and respiratory distress." Symptoms reported by Ghouta residents and doctors to Human Rights Watch included "suffocation, muscle spasms and frothing at the mouth."
Witness statements to The Guardian about symptoms included "people who were sleeping in their homes [who] died in their beds," headaches and nausea, "foam coming out of [victims'] mouths and noses," a "smell something like vinegar and rotten eggs," suffocation, "bodies [that] were turning blue," a "smell like cooking gas" and redness and itching of the eyes. Richard Spencer of The Telegraph summarised witness statements, stating, "The poison ... may have killed hundreds, but it has left twitching, fainting, confused but compelling survivors."
On 22 August, the Center for Documentation of Violations in Syria published numerous testimonies. It summarised doctors' and paramedics' descriptions of the symptoms as "vomiting, foamy salivation, severe agitation, [pinpoint] pupils, redness of the eyes, dyspnea, neurological convulsions, respiratory and heart failure, blood out of the nose and mouth and, in some cases, hallucinations and memory loss".

Analysis of symptoms

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior associate for the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said the reported symptoms are a textbook case of nerve-agent poisoning.
Médecins Sans Frontières Director of Operations Bart Janssens stated that MSF "can neither scientifically confirm the cause of these symptoms nor establish who is responsible for the attack. However, the reported symptoms of the patients, in addition to the epidemiological pattern of the events – characterised by the massive influx of patients in a short period of time, the origin of the patients, and the contamination of medical and first aid workers – strongly indicate mass exposure to a neurotoxic agent."
Gwyn Winfield, Editorial Director at CBRNe World, analysed some videos from the day of the attack and wrote on the magazine's website: "It is difficult to define [an] agent by the signs and symptoms. Clearly respiratory distress, some nerve spasms and a half hearted washdown (involving water and bare hands?!), but it could equally be a riot control agent as a [chemical warfare agent]."

Rockets

Human Rights Watch reported that two types of rockets were used: in Western Ghouta, a 140mm rocket made in the Soviet Union in 1967 and exported to Syria; and in Eastern Ghouta, a 330mm rocket of unknown origin. HRW also reported that at the time of the attack, Syrian rebels were not known to be in possession of the rockets used.
Seymour Hersh has suggested that the 330mm rockets may have been produced locally, and with a limited range. Blogger Eliot Higgins has looked at the munitions linked to the attack and analysed footage of the putative launchers inside government territory.
According to a study published in January 2014 by Theodore Postol and Richard Lloyd, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the rockets used in the attack had a range of about two kilometers, indicating the munitions could not have been fired from the 'heart' or from the Eastern edge of the Syrian Government Controlled Area shown in the Intelligence Map published by the White House on 30 August 2013. A response from Higgins and Kaszeta included an observation that the Russian-language news site ANNA News had posted videos showing a Syrian government military operation running from June to August 2013 to clear positions between Jobar and Qaboun, a strip of land about 2 km away from the 21 August impact sites. MIT Professor Theodore Postol contacted Dan Kaszeta and asked him how he came to the conclusion that Hexamine was the "smoking gun" regarding the alleged culpability of the Syrian Government. Åke Sellström told Postol that indeed "the presence of hexamine may mean that this substance was used as scavenger for protons when producing sarin" but that it was a common substance and not conclusive evidence implicating the Syrian government.
Many of the munitions and their fragments had been moved; however, in two cases, the UN could identify the likely launch azimuths. Triangulating rocket trajectories suggests that the origin of the attack may have been within government or rebel-held territory. Consideration of missile ranges influences calculations as to whether rockets originated from the government or rebel-held regions.

Communications

Two purported intercepts of communications that appeared to implicate the Syrian government received prominent media coverage. One was a phone call allegedly between Syrian officials which Israel's Unit 8200 was said to have intercepted and passed to the US. The other was a phone call which the German Bundesnachrichtendienst said it had intercepted, between a high-ranking representative of Hezbollah and the Iranian embassy, in which the purported Hezbollah official said that poison gas had been used and that Assad's order to attack with chemical weapons had been a strategic error.
On 29 August the Associated Press reported that, according to two U.S. intelligence officials and two other U.S. officials, the U.S. intercept was a conversation between "low-level" Syrian officials with no direct link to the upper echelons of the government or military.
The Bild am Sonntag newspaper subsequently reported that German intelligence indicated that Assad had likely not ordered the attacks. According to Bild, "intelligence interception specialists" relying on communications intercepted by the German vessel Oker said that Syrian military commanders had repeatedly been asking permission to launch chemical attacks for around four months, with permission always being denied from the presidential palace. The sources concluded that 21 August attack had probably not been approved by Bashar al-Assad.

Video

Murad Abu Bilal, Khaled Naddaf and other Center for Documentation of Violations in Syria and Local Coordination Committees of Syria (LCC) media staff went to Zamalka soon after the attacks to film and obtain other documentary evidence. Almost all the journalists died from inhalation of the neurotoxins, except Murad Abu Bilal, who was the only Zamalka LCC media member to survive. The videos were published on YouTube, attracting world-wide media attention.
Experts who have analysed the first video said it shows the strongest evidence yet consistent with the use of a lethal toxic agent. Visible symptoms reportedly included rolling eyes, foaming at the mouth, and tremors. There was at least one image of a child suffering miosis, the pin-point pupil effect associated with the nerve agent Sarin, a powerful neurotoxin reportedly used before in Syria. Ralph Trapp, a former scientist at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said the footage showed what a chemical weapons attack on a civilian area would look like, and went on to note "This is one of the first videos I've seen from Syria where the numbers start to make sense. If you have a gas attack you would expect large numbers of people, children and adults, to be affected, particularly if it's in a built-up area."
Some experts, among them Jean Pascal Zanders, initially stated that evidence that sarin was used, as claimed by pro-rebel sources, was still lacking and highlighted the lack of second-hand contaminations typically associated with use of weapons-grade nerve agents: "I remain sceptical that it was a nerve agent like sarin. I would have expected to see more convulsions," he said. "The other thing that seems inconsistent with sarin is that, given the footage of first responders treating victims without proper protective equipment, you would expect to see considerable secondary casualties from contamination – which does not appear to be evident." However, after Zanders saw footage imminently after the attack, he changed his mind, saying: "The video footage and pictures this time are of a far better quality. You can clearly see the typical signs of asphyxiation, including a pinkish blueish tinge to the skin colour. There is one image of an adult woman where you can see the tell-tale blackish mark around her mouth, all of which suggests death from asphyxiation." Zanders however cautioned that these symptoms covered a range of neurotoxicants, including some available for civilian use as pest control agents, and said that until the UN reported its analysis of samples, "I can't make a judgement.. I have to keep an open mind."
According to a report by The Daily Telegraph, "videos uploaded to YouTube by activists showed rows of motionless bodies and medics attending to patients apparently in the grip of seizures. In one piece of footage, a young boy appeared to be foaming at the mouth while convulsing."
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commander of British Chemical and Biological counterterrorism forces, told BBC that the images were very similar to previous incidents he had witnessed, although he could not verify the footage.

Allegations of false flag attack

The timing of the attacks prompted some U.S. intelligence officials to speculate they were meant to draw western intervention, a concept dismissed by others. In December 2013 Seymour Hersh wrote that in the days before and after the attack, sensors notifying U.S. intelligence agencies of Syrian chemical weapons deployment did not activate, and intelligence briefings shown to the U.S. president contained no information about an impending government chemical weapons attack. Publicly, the U.S. government cited classified intercepts of communications it said were between Syrian officials, unavailable to the public, which they state prove Syrian government forces carried out the chemical attack. Criticizing what they called a misleading presentation of intelligence, a former senior U.S. intelligence official quoted by Seymour Hersh said the transcript actually included intercepts from many months prior to the attack, collated to make them appear related to the Ghouta attacks.
In April 2014 Hersh wrote an article proposing the attacks were committed by Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, whom Hersh writes were supplied with sarin by Turkey. Hersh's argument received some support, but was dismissed by other commentators. The US and Turkish governments denied the accuracy of Hersh's article. On October 20, 2015, Republican People's Party deputy Eren Erdem stated that documents from a Turkish government investigation showed that ISIL and affiliated groups received help from Turkish intelligence to carry out the Ghouta chemical attack.

Foreign government assessments

According to public statements, intelligence agencies in Israel, the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Turkey, and Germany concluded that the Syrian government was most likely responsible for the attacks. Western intelligence agencies agreed that video evidence is consistent with the use of a nerve agent, such as sarin. Laboratory tests showed traces of sarin, in blood and hair samples collected from emergency workers who responded to the attacks.
Russia said there was no evidence tying the Syrian government to the attack and that it was likely carried out by an opposition group.

France

On 2 September, the French government published a nine-page intelligence report blaming the Syrian government for the Ghouta attacks. An unnamed French government official said that the analysis was carried out by the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) and Direction du renseignement militaire (DRM) based on satellite and video images, on-the-ground sources, and samples collected from two April attacks. The report said analysis of samples collected from attacks in Saraqeb and Jobar in April 2013 had confirmed the use of sarin.
The Guardian reported that French intelligence had images that showed rocket attacks on opposition neighborhoods from government-controlled areas to the east and west of Damascus. The report said that the government later launched conventional bombing of those neighborhoods in order to destroy evidence of a chemical attack. Based on analysis of 47 videos, the report said at least 281 fatalities occurred. Using other sources and extrapolation a chemical attack model estimated the total number of death at approximately 1,500.

Germany

The Bundesnachrichtendienst said it intercepted a phone call between a Hezbollah official and the Iranian Embassy in which the Hezbollah representative criticised Assad's decision to attack with poison gas, apparently confirming its use by the Syrian government. German newspaper Der Spiegel reported on 3 September that BND President Gerhard Schindler told them that based on the agency's evidence, Germany now shared the United Kingdom, United States, and France's view that the attacks were carried out by the Syrian government. However, they also said the attack may have been much more potent than intended, speculating that there may have been an error in mixing the chemical weapons used.

Israel

Without going into detail, Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz said on 22 August 2013 that Israel's intelligence assessment was that the Syrian government used chemical weapons in the Damascus area. Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon said the Syrian government had already used chemical weapons against the rebels on a smaller scale multiple times prior to the Ghouta attacks. Fox News reported that Unit 8200 helped provide intelligence to the United States, Israel's closest international ally, implicating the Syrian government in the attacks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the General debate of the sixty-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly that Syrian government used the chemical weapons against its own people.

Russia

Russian officials said that there was no proof that the government of Syria had a hand in the chemical attacks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the American, British and French intelligence reports as "unconvincing" and said at a joint news conference with his French counterpart Laurent Fabius after the release of the United Nations report in mid-September that he continued to believe the rebels carried out the attack. Russian President Vladimir Putin said he wanted to see evidence that would make it "obvious" who used chemical weapons in Ghouta.
In a commentary published in The New York Times on 11 September 2013, Putin wrote that "there is every reason to believe [poison gas] was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons,". Lavrov said on 18 September that "new evidence" given to Russia by the Syrian government would be forthcoming.

Turkey

The Turkish government-run Anadolu Agency published an unconfirmed report on 30 August 2013, pointing to the Syrian 155th Missile Brigade and the 4th Armored Division as the perpetrators of the two attacks. It said the attack had involved 15 to 20 missiles with chemical warheads at around 02:45 on 21 August, targeting residential areas between Douma and Zamalka in Eastern Ghouta. It claimed that the 155th Missile Brigade had used 9K52 Luna-M missiles, M600 missiles, or both, fired from Kufeyte, while other rockets with a 15- to 70-kilometer range were fired by the 4th Armored Division from Mount Qasioun. The agency did not explain its source.

United Kingdom

A report on the attacks by the United Kingdom's Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) was published on 29 August 2013 prior to a vote on intervention by the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. The report said at least 350 people were killed and that it was "highly likely" that the attacks had been carried out by the Syrian government, resting in part on the firm view that the Syrian opposition was not capable of carrying out a chemical weapons attack on this scale, and on the JIC view that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war on a small scale on 14 previous occasions. Analysis of the Ghouta attacks themselves was based largely on reviewing video footage and publicly available witness evidence. The report conceded problems with motivation for the attacks, saying there was "no obvious political or military trigger for regime use of CW on an apparently larger scale now." British officials said they believe the Syrian military used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition on at least 14 times prior to the Ghouta attacks and described "a clear pattern of regime use" of the nerve agent since 2012.
The report was met with substantial scepticism in the British media, with the Daily Mail explicitly comparing it with the "dodgy dossier" the UK government had published in 2003 prior to the Iraq War. A vote in the House of Commons to approve UK participation in military action against Syria was narrowly rejected, with some MPs arguing that the case for Syrian government culpability was not sufficiently strong to justify approving action. Prime Minister David Cameron himself had been forced to concede that "in the end there is no 100 percent certainty about who is responsible."

United States

A controversial "US government assessment of the Ghouta attacks" was published by the White House on 30 August 2013, with a longer classified version made available to members of Congress. The report blamed the chemical attacks on the Syrian government, saying rockets containing a nerve agent were fired from government-held territory into neighborhoods in the early morning, impacting at least 12 locations. It stated 1,429 people were killed, including at least 426 children. It dismissed the possibility that evidence supporting the US government's conclusion could have been manufactured by the opposition, stating it "does not have the capability" to fabricate videos, eyewitness accounts, and other information. The report also said that the US believed Syrian officials directed the attacks, based on "intercepted communications." A major element, as reported by news media, was an intercepted telephone call between a Syrian Ministry of Defense official and a Syrian 155th Brigade chemical weapons unit commander in which the former demanded answers for the attacks. According to some reports, this phone intercept was provided to the U.S. by Israeli Intelligence Corps Unit 8200.
The U.S. government assessment suggested a motive for the attack, describing it as "a desperate effort to push back rebels from several areas in the capital's densely packed eastern suburbs." The report then states that evidence suggests "the high civilian death toll surprised and panicked senior Syrian officials, who called off the attack and then tried to cover it up." Secretary of State John Kerry later announced that hair, blood, soil, and cloth samples collected from the attack sites had tested positive for sarin or its immediate breakdown products.
At least three members of Congress, including at least one member of President Barack Obama's Democratic Party, expressed skepticism about the US intelligence report, calling the evidence circumstantial and thin. Obama's request that Congress authorize military force was not put to a vote of either the House of Representatives or the Senate, and the president ultimately admitted that "I wouldn't say I'm confident" that he could convince Congress to support strikes against Syria.
Democratic Party Representative Alan Grayson offered some details regarding the classified report, which he described as 12 pages long, and criticized both the four-page public summary and the classified report. Grayson said the unclassified summary relied on "intercepted telephone calls, 'social media' postings and the like, but not one of these is actually quoted or attached … (As to whether the classified summary is the same, I couldn't possibly comment, but again, draw your own conclusion.)" Grayson cited as a problematic example the intercepted phone call between a Syrian Ministry of Defense official and the Syrian 155th Brigade, the transcript of which was not provided in the classified report, leaving Grayson unable to judge the accuracy of a report in The Daily Caller that the call's implications had been misrepresented in the report.
The AP quoted anonymous US intelligence officials as saying that the evidence presented in the report linking Assad to the attack was "not a slam dunk." Jeffrey Goldberg also reported that James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, personally told President Obama that the case for the Syrian government's responsibility was strong but not a "slam dunk." The AP later characterized the evidence released by the administration as circumstantial and said the government had denied its requests for more direct evidence, including satellite imagery and communications intercepts cited in the government assessment.
IPS news analyst Gareth Porter questioned why the report was released by the White House as a "government assessment" as opposed being released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as an "intelligence community assessment." Porter quoted former intelligence officials who said the report was "evidently an administration document" and who also suggested evidence was "cherry-picked" to support the conclusion that the Syrian government carried out the attacks.
On 9 October, a US spokesman stated the administration lacks the "irrefutable, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence" some American voters are seeking but that a "common-sense test" implicates Assad. The U.S. publicly stated there was no "reliable" evidence that the opposition had access to chemical weapons, although Seymour Hersh reported that U.S. intelligence agencies privately assessed some rebel factions to be capable of sarin production.

Attack

At the time of the attack, Syria was not a member of the Chemical Weapons Convention. However, Human Rights Watch argues that the Ghouta chemical attack was illegal under a different international agreement:
Syria is a party to the 1925 Geneva Gas protocol, which bans the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices. The use of chemical weapons is also prohibited as a matter of customary international humanitarian law, or the laws of war. The prohibition on the use of chemical weapons applies to all armed conflicts, including so-called non-international armed conflicts such as the current fighting in Syria. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, in the Tadic case, stated "there undisputedly emerged a general consensus in the international community on the principle that the use of [chemical] weapons is also prohibited in internal armed conflicts."

International Criminal Court referral

Human Rights Watch stated that the UN Security Council should refer the Syria situation to the International Criminal Court (ICC) "to ensure accountability for all war crimes and crimes against humanity." Amnesty International also said that the Syria situation should be referred to the ICC because "the best way for the United States to signal its abhorrence for war crimes and crimes against humanity and to promote justice in Syria, would be to reaffirm its support for the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court." However, as the amendment to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court explicitly making it a war crime to use chemical weapons in an internal conflict has not been ratified by any major state nor Syria, the legal situation is complex and reliant on the attack being a part of a wider war crime.

Domestic

Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi was quoted by the official state news agency, Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), as saying that the government did not and would not use such weapons, if in fact they even existed. Al-Zoubi said, "everything that has been said is absurd, primitive, illogical and fabricated. What we say is what we mean: there is no use of such things (chemical weapons) at all, at least not by the Syrian army or the Syrian state, and it's easy to prove and it is not that complicated." SANA called the reports of chemical attacks as "untrue and designed to derail the ongoing UN inquiry." A Syrian military official appeared on state television denouncing the reports as "a desperate opposition attempt to make up for rebel defeats on the ground." Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad declared it a tactic by the rebels to turn around the civil war which he said "they were losing" and that, though the government had admitted to having stocks of chemical weapons, stated they would never be used "inside Syria". Democratic Union Party leader Salih Muslim said he doubted that the Syrian government carried out the chemical attack.
The National Coalition called the attack a "coup de grace that kills all hopes for a political solution in Syria." In a statement on Facebook, the Coventry-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-government activist network, blamed the attack on the Syrian military and said of the incident that "we assure the world that silence and inaction in the face of such gross and large-scale war crimes, committed in this instance by the Syrian regime, will only embolden the criminals to continue in this path. The international community is thus complicit in these crimes because of its [polarisation], silence and inability to work on a settlement that would lead to the end of the daily bloodshed in Syria."

International

The international community condemned the attacks. United States President Barack Obama said the US military should strike targets in Syria to retaliate for the government's purported use of chemical weapons, a proposal publicly supported by French President François Hollande, but condemned by Russia and Iran. The Arab League stated it would support military action against Syria in the event of UN support, though member states Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Tunisia opposed it.
At the end of August, the House of Commons of the United Kingdom voted against military intervention in Syria. In early September, the United States Congress began debating a proposed authorisation to use military force, although votes on the resolution were indefinitely postponed amid opposition from many legislators and tentative agreement between Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin on an alternative proposal, under which Syria would declare and surrender its chemical weapons to be destroyed under international supervision.
In contrast to the positions of their governments, polls in early September indicated that most people in the US, UK, Germany and France opposed military intervention in Syria. One poll indicated that 50% of Americans could support military intervention with cruise missiles only, "meant to destroy military units and infrastructure that have been used to carry out chemical attacks." In a survey of American military personnel, around 75% said they opposed air strikes on Syria, with 80% saying an attack would not be "in the U.S. national interest". Meanwhile, a Russian poll suggested that most Russians supported neither side in the conflict, with less than 10% saying they supported Assad.