Syria: new chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta

Estimates of the dead vary from 70 to 150 after the latest and worst chemical attack on the besieged enclave of Eastern Ghouta, in the Damascus suburbs. The number is likely to rise, as rescue workers are still reporting new casualties following the gassing at the town of Douma, the last in the enclave that remains in rebel hands. The White Helmets volunteer civil defense group said on Twitter: "More families were found suffocated in their houses and shelters in #Douma. The number of victıms is increasing dramatically, and the ambulance teams and the @SyriaCivilDefe volunteers continue their search and rescue operations." The apparent strike by a "barrel bomb" filled with either sarin or chlorine gas targeted a building where displaced families were sheltering from the ongoing air-raids on Douma.

"Seventy people suffocated to death and hundreds are still suffocating," Raed al-Saleh, head of the White Helmets, told Al Jazeera as news of the attack broke early April 8. "White Helmet volunteers are trying to help the people but all that we can do is evacuate them to another area by foot because most of the vehicles and centers went out of service."

The Ghouta Media Center, a body of the civil resistance, said on Twitter  that more than 75 people had "suffocated," while a further 1,000 people had suffered the effects of the attack. The victims are overwhelmingly civilians, and many are said to be children

The attack has also been confirmed by the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations (UOSSM), and the Syrian American Medical Society.

The Assad regime said through its official news agency SANA said the reports are a "fabriaction" invented by the Jaish al-Islam rebels who remain in control in Douma. (More at The Independent, BBC News,  Reuters)

There have been more than 400 regime and Russian air-strikes hit Douma over the past 48 hours, the Outer Damascus Civil Defense said. "Douma's remaining doctors and emergency personnel are “almost totally paralyzed before the massive numbers of injured”, said doctor Muhammad a-Shami. (EA Worldview)

On Twitter, Donald Trump has pledged a US military response to the Douma attack.

Bogus 'anti-war' responses to Ghouta chemical attack





2. "Not our problem." This response is an exercise in America-first imperial narcissism which makes every question about "us."  There are obvious problems with any extension of US military power in Syria or anywhere else, which we presumably do not have to elaborate on here. But if you have greater outrage for whatever military action Trump takes in response to this attack than you do for the attack itself, there is something seriously wrong with your moral compass.







Conspiracy vultures descend on Ghouta

Well, the first entry is in. That didn't take long. The vile Vanessa Beeley in the (perenially wakcy21st Century Wire declares the Ghouta chemical attack a "fraud."

More bogus 'anti-war' responses to Ghouta chemical attack








This innocent-until-proven-guilty line is kind of a soft-sell on the "false flag" tack, but possibly even loopier when you really scratch it, since it implies the attack didn't even happen. Maybe all those traumatized children in the videos are "crisis actors"?



So don't lecture me about strange bedfellows, Assad-suckers.