‘Many inconsistencies’ in UN report on Syria sarin attack

Russia on Friday criticised a United Nations report, which blamed a sarin gas attack in Syria on Bashar al-Assad’s regime, with a deputy foreign minister saying it contained inconsistencies and unverified evidence.

“Even the first cursory read shows that many inconsistencies, logical discrepancies, using doubtful witness accounts and unverified evidence... all of this is still (in the report),” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Interfax news agency.

The regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was responsible for a deadly sarin gas attack on a rebel-held town in April, a UN report found Thursday.

“The panel is confident that the Syrian Arab Republic is responsible for the release of sarin at Khan Sheikhun on 4 April 2017,” stated the report seen by AFP.

More than 87 people died in the nerve gas attack on the town in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province.

Horrific images from the immediate aftermath of the attack drew global outrage and prompted the United States to fire cruise missiles at a Syrian air base from which the West says the assault was launched.

Last month, UN war crimes investigators said they had evidence that the Syrian air force was behind the attack, despite repeated denials from Damascus.

Syria ally Russia maintains that the sarin attack was most likely caused by a bomb set off directly on the ground, not by a Syrian air strike as alleged by the West.

source: Alarabiya