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posted by janrinok on Friday September 09 2016, @04:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the world-stands-and-watches dept.

Two people - including a thirteen year old girl - died and one hundred twenty were sickened when the rebels in Aleppo were hit with a chlorine gas attack.

Chlorine was the first gas used during the first World War. That it is largely ineffective led to the development of such treats as Mustard Gas and Lewisite.

Doctors in Aleppo Tend to Scores of Victims in Gas Attack:

Rescuers and citizen journalists who went to the scene said by text message that there had been a strong smell of bleach.

One of the victims, a 13-year-old girl named Hajer Kyali, died Wednesday afternoon. She had been in intensive care since the attack, which doctors said they believed had struck her family's house directly, delivering a deadly dose of the gas.

Medical staff members described seeing people with symptoms such as shortness of breath, coughing, sneezing, irritation of the eyes, nausea and in some cases respiratory failure. Such symptoms are consistent with attacks involving chlorine, which can kill in high concentrations.

Syria promised to give up its war gas a while back but in my understanding has surrendered only a tiny portion of its stockpile.

However, chlorine gas is quite easy to make. Possibly it was used because the aggressors had no access to the more-effective gasses such as Mustard Gas and Sarin.

Additional Reporting:


[This is by no means the first such attack. See here for Wikipedia info.]

[According to Wikipedia, earlier attacks did include Sarin. Chlorine is readily available from industrial sources]

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2016, @06:09PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09 2016, @06:09PM (#399737)

    Who else has got the helicopters to drop the weapons? ISIS haven't. The Kurds haven't. So, it's Syria, Russia or the US?

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Unixnut on Friday September 09 2016, @07:23PM

    by Unixnut (5779) on Friday September 09 2016, @07:23PM (#399760)

    You don't need helicopters to drop the weapons. Quite simple to be done via rockets, the warheads which can be produced to fit on the rockets is in the factory held by Al-Nusra.

    Plus I am sure there are alternative delivery methods available. Humans are the best at finding ever more ways of being brutal to other humans, so where there is a will, there is a way.

  • (Score: 2) by Username on Friday September 09 2016, @07:53PM

    by Username (4557) on Friday September 09 2016, @07:53PM (#399770)

    Well, how do they know it fell from a helicopter and not a neighboring rooftop?

    Only one barrel is telling me this was clandestine. Pretty sure a helicopter can hold more than one barrel. If a military was going to gas bomb a city I’d think there would be a heli dropping 4 barrels every 5 minutes or so. A large steam of them dropping barrel after barrel. If I was the military and considering atrocities, I wouldn’t even gas bomb them. I’d be dropping barrels of flaming oil.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 10 2016, @10:34AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 10 2016, @10:34AM (#399957)

    The last widely reported "gas attack" occurred when the "rebels" were getting beaten. Why would the Syrian government drop chlorine gas on civilians at a time when they have the upper hand?

    Let's see what Occam's Razor can slice out...

    • "Rebels" place barrels of chlorine on a roof top
    • "Rebels" send red shirts into offensive positions below chlorine
    • Government delivers a missile to the location
    • "Rebels" scream "Assad" and look to the international community for sympathy
    • Any casual observer with an IQ higher than their shoe size sees right through it