Content area
Full Text
An international investigative team has determined with "the utmost confidence" that sulfur mustard was used in northern Syria, according to a Nov. 6 press release by the organization that established the team.
In the release, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said the report by its fact-finding mission, as the OPCW calls it, described an Aug. 21 incident "in which a non-state actor had allegedly used a chemical weapon in the town of Marea," which is close to Aleppo, Syria's largest city.
Through sample collection and interviews, the team "was able to confirm with the utmost confidence that at least two people were exposed to sulfur mustard and were in the process of recovering from the exposure," the press release said. The team also concluded that it is "very likely that the effects of sulfur mustard resulted in the death of a baby," the release said.
There have been several accounts tying the Islamic State group to use of sulfur mustard against opposing forces in Syria and Iraq, but the conclusions of the OPCW appear to be the strongest to date.
As Arms Control Today went to press, the report had not been publicly released, but two Western officials confirmed in interviews the summary description and provided additional detail on the contents of the report.
In a Nov. 13 interview, a U.S. official said the compelling evidence of sulfur mustard in Marea came from biomedical samples from people who had been in the area during an Islamic State attack. As the human body breaks down sulfur mustard that it has...