Syria rejects US, France accusations over false-flag 2013 chemical attack

The Syrian Foreign Ministry in a statement denounced repeated accusations against the Arab country by France and the United States over a false-flag chemical attack on the outskirts of the capital Damascus in 2013.

The statement came on Saturday after the French Foreign Ministry and the US National Security Council issued separate statements on Monday on the occasion of the 10^th anniversary of the alleged attack, alleging yet again that the Syrian government made use of chemical weapons against its people.

The attack, which the militants blamed on the Syrian government, took place in the Ghouta district in the early hours of August 21, 2013, and killed hundreds of people.

At the time, the Syrian government blamed the attack on foreign-backed Takfiri terrorists fighting army forces. It rejected allegations of any involvement, emphasizing that the Damascus government would never use chemical weapons against its own people.

In their recent statements, the US and France repeated their spurious anti-Syria allegations and promised “justice” and “punishment” for the perpetrators as well as “crimes” by the Syrian government.

The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however, condemned the statements, saying they included false accusations about the use of chemical weapons and other fabricated and forged incidents.

“The two statements fall within the framework of the campaign of misinformation and lies against Syria, and attest to the involvement of Washington, Paris, and other countries in orchestrating the heinous crime,” it said.

These states are either directly or indirectly engaged in terrorist attacks on Syria, it added.

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“Such statements are meant to put the real criminal out of sight, and act as a cover-up for the involvement of France and the US in chemical attacks carried out by terrorist groups in Eastern Ghouta in August 2013 and elsewhere in Syria,” the ministry noted.

The Syrian foreign ministry went on to lambast the US and France for sponsoring terrorist groups and providing them with toxic materials used in all chemical attacks launched across Syria over the past years.

The ministry underscored that US and French officials “must be held to account over their connections with allied terrorist organizations, participation in the massacres of Syrian people, and enforcing the policy of starving Syrians by means of terrorism and unilateral sanctions.”

The US and its allies have already staged false-flag chemical attacks against civilians in the Syrian provinces to implicate Damascus.

On April 14, 2018, the United States, the UK, and France carried out a string of airstrikes against Syria over a suspected chemical weapons attack on the city of Douma, located about 10 kilometers northeast of the capital Damascus.

That alleged attack was reported by the White Helmets group, which published videos showing them purportedly treating survivors.

Leaked documents from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) later showed that the investigators of the Douma incident had found “no evidence” of a chemical weapons attack.

However, the organization censored the findings under pressure from the US and its allies to conceal evidence undermining the pretext of the US-led bombing of Syria days after the alleged attack.

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The Western media and governments have repeatedly accused the Syrian government of using chemical weapons against its own citizens in the war against terrorists.

It comes as Syria surrendered its stockpile of chemical weapons in 2014 to a joint mission led by the United States and the OPCW, which oversaw the destruction of the weaponry. It has also consistently denied using chemical weapons.

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