Test results show that the deadly nerve agent sarin or a similar substance was used in an alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria, the international chemical weapons watchdog says.
Ahmet Uzumcu, head of The Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said on April 19 that samples from 10 victims had been analyzed at four laboratories.
The results of these analyses "indicate exposure to sarin or a sarin-like substance," Uzumcu said. “While further details of the laboratory analyses will follow, the analytical results already obtained are incontrovertible."
A suspected chemical air strike by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces killed more than 80 people in the rebel-held Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib Province on April 4.
Damascus and Moscow, Assad’s main backer in the six-year-old Syrian conflict, claim that the toxic gas was released when strikes by government forces hit a rebel weapons depot, an assertion the United States and others reject.
