A Syrian monitoring group says the death toll in a suspected chemical attack on a northern town the previous day has gone up to to 72, as activists reported fresh air strikes on the town hit in the harrowing assault.
Ahmed al-Sheikho of the Idlib Civil Defence team says the Wednesday air strikes hit near where the suspected chemical attack occurred in the town of Khan Sheikhoun.
The U.N. Security Council is to hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday on that attack, which activists say was one of the worst in the country’s civil war.
The Britain based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says 20 children and 17 women are among the 72 killed.
Syrian children receive treatment at a small hospital in the town of Maaret al-Noman following a suspected toxic gas attack in Khan Sheikhun, a nearby rebel-held town in Syria’s northwestern Idlib Province on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, U.N. chief Antonio Guterres said the suspected chemical attack shows that “war crimes” continue in Syria.
“The horrific events of yesterday demonstrate unfortunately that war crimes are going on in Syria [and that] international humanitarian law is being violated frequently,” Mr. Guterres said as he went into a Syria aid conference in Brussels.
Mr. Guterres said the U.N. wanted to establish accountability for such crimes and he was “confident the Security Council will live up to its responsibilities”.
Russia, which holds a veto in the Security Council and has backed President Bashar al-Assad against the rebels, said Tuesday’s incident happened after a Syrian air strike hit a “terrorist warehouse” containing “toxic substances”.
“The arsenal of chemical weapons” was destined for fighters in Iraq, the Russian Defence Ministry said, adding that the information was “completely reliable and objective”.
The United States, France and Britain have submitted a draft resolution to the Security Council demanding a full investigation.
Earlier, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said all the evidence pointed to Mr. Assad being responsible for the attack.
“All the evidence I have seen suggests this was the Assad regime... using illegal weapons on their own people,” Mr. Johnson said as he arrived for the aid conference.
Members of the Syrian civil defence volunteers, also known as the White Helmets, and people search for survivors from the rubble following reported air strikes on the rebel-held town of Saqba, in Eastern Ghouta, on Tuesday.
