File Photo: A video image of a toddler on a Oxygen-Powered Resuscitator after a suspected chemical attack in the rebel-held Syrian suburb of Douma, near Damascus. AP
The October 2016 attack near a field hospital outside the town of Kafr Zeita, in western Syria, was already well-documented, but the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) for the first time accused Assad's forces.
"There are reasonable grounds to believe that one Mi8/17 helicopter of the Syrian Arab Air Force dropped at least one yellow pressurised cylinder," the OPCW said in a report.
"Upon impact, the cylinder ruptured and released chlorine gas, which dispersed through the Wadi al-Aanz valley, injuring 35 named individuals and affecting dozens more," OPCW investigators concluded.
The team interviewed dozens of witnesses, analysed samples, and reviewed satellite images.
Assad was repeatedly accused of using chemical weapons during Syria's 13-year civil war, and there has been widespread concern about the fate of Syria's stocks since his 2024 ouster.
In a landmark speech last year, the foreign minister of the new Syrian government pledged to dismantle any remnants of Assad's chemical weapons programme.
The OPCW welcomed the "full and unfettered access" the new Syrian authorities granted their investigators.
It was the "first instance of cooperation by the Syrian Arab Republic with an... investigation," the OPCW said.
The OPCW wants to establish a permanent presence in Syria to draw up an inventory of chemical weapons sites and start the destruction of the stockpiles.
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