page_title: Ghouta chemical attack
section_title: Rockets
hierarchical_section_title: Ghouta chemical attack / Evidence / Rockets
caption_attribution_description: English: A BM-12 16-tube multiple launch rocket, displayed in a Russian military museum.
context_page_description: The Ghouta chemical attack occurred in Ghouta, Syria, during the Syrian civil war, in the early hours of 21 August 2013. Two opposition-controlled areas in the suburbs around Damascus were struck by rockets containing the chemical agent sarin. Estimates of the death toll range from at least 281 people to 1,729. The attack was the deadliest use of chemical weapons since the Iran–Iraq War.
  Inspectors from the United Nations Mission already in Syria to investigate an earlier alleged chemical weapons attack requested access to sites in Ghouta the day after the attack and called for a ceasefire to allow inspectors to visit the Ghouta sites. The Syrian Ba'athist government granted the UN's request on 25 August, and inspectors visited and investigated Moadamiyah in Western Ghouta the next day and Zamalka and Ein Tarma in Eastern Ghouta on 28 and 29 August.
  The UN investigation team confirmed "clear and convincing evidence" of the use of sarin delivered by surface-to-surface rockets, and a 2014 report by the UN Human Rights Council found that "significant quantities of sarin were used in a well-planned indiscriminate attack targeting civilian-inhabited areas, causing mass casualties.
context_section_description: 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. Eliot Higgins has looked at the munitions linked to the attack and analysed footage of the putative launchers inside government territory.
  According to analysis conducted 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, which, the authors claimed, meant that 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 21 August impact sites.
  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.
caption: A RPU-14 multiple rocket launcher, of a type that may have launched M-14 munitions found by UN inspectors on 26 August at a site in Moadamiyah.[180]
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