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WARNING: The above report contains images some may find distressing.
France has said it would introduce “intervention measures” if claims of a Syrian government chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta late on Wednesday proved to be true.
“If the use of chemical weapons was found, verified, attributed and the use of the chemical weapon left people dead,” France would take “intervention measures to prevent the proliferation of chemical weapons,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Thursday, according to the official Chinese Xinhua news agency.
Activists in Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus, released videos on Wednesday showing what appears to be phosphorus bombs being dropped, claiming that the attack took place in the residential town of Hamorya. The videos appeared to show victims struggling to breathe.
The government denied the claims and said “desperate rebels” were attempting to distort facts.
“Yesterday night was the darkest and most horrific night ever. They used phosphorus, napalm, cluster bombs and chlorine gas,” Ammar al-Selmo, a volunteer aid worker with the Syrian Civil Defence, told Al Jazeera by phone from the opposition-held enclave.
“Our teams were panicking because its like 2013 when [President Bashar] al-Assad’s regime used chemical weapons on Ghouta,” added al-Selmo.
Eastern Ghouta has been under control of armed opposition groups since 2013 – two years into a popular uprising in Syria calling for the removal of al-Assad.
When the government responded with force, locals and army defectors took up arms and managed to gain control of large territories across the country.
With Russia’s intervention in 2015, Assad’s forces have been able to regain most of the territory, but Eastern Ghouta remains one of the last armed opposition strongholds.
The area has been under a suffocating siege by government forces since 2013, in an attempt to drain the armed opposition operating there.
As Syrian government forces intensify their push to regain control over the enclave, aided by Russia’s aerial bombing campaign, more than 900 people have been killed over the past three weeks.
The area is a key target due to its proximity to Damascus, where the government of President Assad is based.
It is believed that around 400,000 people still live in the besieged area, which suffers from acute food and medicine shortages.
In 2013, Eastern Ghouta was the target of a suspected government chemical weapons attack that shocked the world.
According to some estimates, warplanes dropped about 1,000kg of the deadly nerve agent Sarin on the area, killing more than 1,000 people, the majority of whom were civilians.
Despite government claims that it no longer possesses chemical weapons, the area witnessed several other smaller-scale chemical attacks in recent weeks, as Syrian and Russian forces step up their offensive.
A UN-led joint investigative mechanism, which is no longer operating, reported in August 2016 that the Syrian government had carried out at least two chemical attacks in 2014 and 2015.
Calls by the international community to investigate more recent claims of chemical weapons attacks have been blocked by Russia.
