Syria chemical weapons attack killed 1,429, says John Kerry

BBC News online -- 30 August 2013

John Kerry: "We know rockets came only from regime-controlled areas"

US Secretary of State John Kerry has said Syrian government forces killed 1,429 people in a chemical weapons attack near Damascus last week.

Mr Kerry said the dead included 426 children, and described the attack as an "inconceivable horror".
Shortly afterwards, President Barack Obama said the Syrian chemical attack threatened US national security interests.
He said the US was considering a "limited narrow act".

The government of President Bashar al-Assad has denied carrying out last week's attack and blames rebel forces.

Analysis

Jonathan Marcus BBC diplomatic correspondent

Mr Kerry's speech was a clear and powerful statement of the rationale for military action against Syria. The focus was placed entirely upon deterring the Syrian authorities from ever using chemical weapons again. This was neither an intervention in the civil war nor an attempt to topple the Assad regime.
Mr Kerry sought to convince a US public that is tired of war that it was Washington's responsibility to act. The message was that there would be no need to wait for the UN inspectors' report; he insisted the report would tell Americans nothing they didn't know already.
The stage is set for action. While no final decision has yet been taken to strike, it may only be a matter of days.

UN chemical weapons inspectors are investigating the alleged poison-gas attacks and will present preliminary findings to the UN after they leave Damascus on Saturday. 

But Mr Kerry said the US already had the facts, and nothing that the UN weapons inspectors found could tell the world anything new.

He said that any response would not involve the US in a protracted conflict like Iraq or Afghanistan.
The US government earlier published an assessment of its intelligence, saying this information was backed by accounts from medical personnel, witnesses and journalists, videos and thousands of social media reports.

He said the evidence showed 1,429 people had been killed and that regime forces had prepared for the attack three days earlier.

"We know rockets came only from regime-controlled areas and landed only in opposition-held areas," he said.

"All of these things we know, the American intelligence community has high confidence."

Mr Kerry called Mr Assad "a thug and a murderer" but said any response by the US would be carefully measured to avoid open-ended commitments.

The UN Security Council is unlikely to approve any military intervention because permanent member Russia is a close ally of the Syrian government, and has vetoed two previous draft resolutionsy

Analysis

David Kay Weapons expert, ex-Iraq Survey Group

There is no doubt that a chemical weapons attack took place but not such a compelling case on who did it. The evidence tying this attack directly to the Assad regime was largely circumstantial and asserted - not revealed.
What we would like are the details of the conversations, who carried them out and the background. This is one of the conundrums of intelligence - the reluctance of the people who collect it to reveal in detail what they collected because of the fear of loss of sources and methods.
Another key element missing is why is this important to US national security and important enough where we would consider a military attack because doubts persist in the US about why we should do this. About 100,000 died before from conventional munitions and we did nothing.
And Kerry did not in the same compelling fashion that he laid the chemical attack at the regime's feet explain why he was certain that a US military attack would bring the Syrian regime to the negotiating table.

The US was also dealt a blow on Thursday when the UK parliament rejected a motion supporting the principle of military intervention.

The vote rules the UK out of any potential military alliance.

However, US officials said they would continue to push for a coalition, and France said it was ready to take action in Syria alongside the US.
President Francois Hollande said the UK vote made no difference to France's position.
"Each country is sovereign to participate or not in an operation. That is as valid for Britain as it is for France," he said.

He said that if the UN Security Council was unable to act, a coalition would form including the Arab League and European countries.
"France will be part of it. France is ready," he said.

He ruled out strikes while the UN inspectors were in Syria. However he did not rule out the possibility that military action could be taken before next Wednesday, when the French parliament is due to debate the issue.
Neither France nor the US need parliamentary approval for action.

The use of chemical weapons is banned under several treaties, and is also considered illegal under customary international humanitarian law.

Key US intelligence findings

• US estimates the alleged chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August killed 1,429 people, including 426 children
• Assesses with "high confidence" that Syrian government carried out the attack against opposition elements
• Laboratory analysis from victims of the incident revealed exposure to the nerve agent, sarin
• Assesses it is "highly unlikely" that opposition forces executed the attack
• Assesses with "high confidence" that Syrian government has carried out multiple chemical weapons attacks on a small scale this year
• Assesses the opposition has not used chemical weapons

The Syrian army is known to have stockpiles of chemical agents including sarin gas.

Earlier accounts of the attack in Damascus quoted officials from medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres as saying 355 people had been killed.
Opposition sources later claimed more than 1,000 people had died.

The UN inspectors have collected various samples that will now be examined in laboratories across the world.
The UN team is not mandated to apportion blame for the attacks.

In another development on Friday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan - a vocal opponent of the Syrian government - said limited intervention in Syria "wouldn't be satisfactory".
Speaking at a reception in Ankara, he said any action should be more like the international intervention over Kosovo in 1999.

Despite the lack of a UN resolution, the US and UK supported more than 70 days of air strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to protect civilians from further attacks in Kosovo.
The Obama administration is reportedly studying the Nato-led military campaign as a potential precedent for intervention without a specific UN mandate.

More than 100,000 people are estimated to have died since the conflict erupted in Syria in March 2011, and the conflict has produced at least 1.7 million refugees.

Forces which could be used against Syria:
• Four US destroyers - USS Gravely, USS Ramage, USS Barry and USS Mahan - are in the eastern Mediterranean, equipped with cruise missiles. The missiles can also be fired from submarines, but the US Navy does not reveal their locations
• Airbases at Incirlik and Izmir in Turkey, and in Jordan, could be used to carry out strikes
• Two aircraft carriers - USS Nimitz and USS Harry S Truman are in the wider region
• French aircraft carrierCharles de Gaulle is currently in Toulon in the western Mediterranean
• French Raffale and Mirage aircraft can also operate from Al-Dhahra airbase in the UAE