‘We have elements that will enable us to show that the regime knowingly used chemical weapons, ‘ he said.
Last week in an interview with AFP, Assad claimed the attack was a “fabrication” to justify a USA missile strike on Syrian forces.
While the Syrian military continues to deny responsibility for the attack against Khan Sheikhoun, blaming the rebels and stating that it would never use chemical weapons, “it is hard to imagine that Assad did not know about the attack in advance”.
This comes two weeks after a chemical attack that killed almost 90 people in Syria.
Israel said it believed Syria retained up to three tonnes of the weapons. It was meant to send a message to the Assad regime not to use chemical weapons.
Dan Kaszeta, a United Kingdom -based chemical weapons expert, said the Israeli estimate appeared to be conservative, but nonetheless was enough to be highly lethal.
Israel believes that Syrian military commanders ordered the sarin gas attack on Khan Sheikhoun with Assad’s knowledge.
Its ally Russian Federation, meanwhile, said an air strike hit a rebel depot full of chemical munitions – but this suggestion has been widely rejected. By the way, the Syrian leadership at the time offered safety guarantees and insisted that OPCW experts visit Aleppo, but nobody came, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Israel welcomed the strike on its northern neighbor.
“While further details of the laboratory analyses will follow, the analytical results already obtained are incontrovertible”, Uzumcu said. Two other Israeli defense officials, who spoke on conditions of anonymity, confirmed the assessment, the Associated Press reported.
The Post, citing a defense official, also said the regime used the chemical weapons out of frustration after failing to make meaningful advances on the ground despite support from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.
The Syrian government and rebels are allowing up to 30,000 people to leave areas besieged by their forces over the coming two months in a deal critics say amounts to demographic rearrangement.
Russian Federation must end “blind support” for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and help find a political solution to the six-year Syrian civil war, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said April 18.
In 2013, the Assad regime had disclosed that it had almost 1,300 tonne chemical weapons, including sarin, VX nerve agent and mustard gas, which are all banned. A 2013 chemical strike carried out by the Assad regime killed more than 1,400 Syrian civilians.