グータ化学攻撃
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.
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.
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。
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.