HRW did not have any evidence to suggest that, whatever substance was used, this was the result of a conventional round accidentally striking a chemical or gas facility in the surrounding area. The New York-based NGO also spoke to one doctor working in the medical center at Arbeen who claimed that activists told him 18 missiles were fired "from the direction of the October War Panorama, a military museum in Damascus city, and of Mezzeh military airport, hit Zamalka, Ayn Tarma, Douma, and Moadamiya."
The Syrian Support Group (SSG), a U.S.-licensed rebel aid provider, cited one very early report that preceded the HRW briefing that was relayed by Mohammed Salaheddine, a journalist with Al Aan TV and an eyewitness to the early-morning attacks. Salaheddine claimed that four rockets hit Eastern Ghouta, the first striking Zamalka, the second Ayn Tarma, the third Jobar, and the fourth Zamalka again. He said these were all Grad 122-mm rockets and came from the Damascus-Homs highway near the Baghdad Bridge (southern Damascus), and the other two came from Qabun (north of Jobar). (Note that the Baghdad Bridge is near the Nusariyeh chemical research facility, which the regime currently controls.)
These attacks appeared to have preceded a rapid buildup of conventional military forces around Easter Ghouta which, according to Salaheddine, included 30 tanks and "several thousand regime soldiers." Non-chemical rocket attacks continued from the direction of Mezze Air Base in Moaddamiya, presumably launched by the Fourth Division. "Large explosions could be heard in the background during the call with Mohammad," the SSG emailed.
Eastern Ghouta is a rebel-held area where the Free Syrian Army-affiliated units, as well as some Salafist-jihadist groups including al-Qaeda, have firmly established themselves to a degree few Syria watchers appreciate. The regime has thrown everything it has against this area, including chemical weapons, because it's not only a strategic launchpad for further incursions into central Damascus, it is also home to one formidable rebel groups in the south: Liwa al-Islam.
Last summer, this brigade was responsible for the assassination of several high-ranking members of Assad's "crisis management cell," including Bashar's own brother-in-law and longtime Syrian security chief Assaf Shawkat. Any gains the regime may have made to flush out the rebels from Eastern Ghouta have been swiftly reversed. (One source told me a possible motive the regime may have had to strike so furiously today was that Saudi Arabian-purchased weapons, mainly anti-tank munitions, may have been recently delivered to FSA affiliates in this area. Rebels here have also raided regime stockpiles in recent days.)
Still, many will speculate as to why the regime would launch such a catastrophic chemical attack days after the arrival of a 13-man UN inspection team in Damascus tasked with investigating claims of prior chemical weapons uses. That team had to strenuously negotiate the remit of its mission and agree to only inspect three sites where the alleged attacks took places many months ago and where any soil or blood samples will have long since been degraded. It also agreed not to enter any area in Syria where regime military operations were underway. This of course would include Eastern Ghouta, and that inked stipulation may have been part of the regime's logic in brazenly gassing so many within a few minutes drive from where the UN inspectors were being hosted. It appears unlikely in the extreme that they will gain access to any of Wednesday's target sites.
The regime and its main European ally, Russia, also have not coordinated their responses to the latest accusation of war crimes. Damascus denies that any chemical agent was used. "These are lies that serve the propaganda of the terrorists," one official said. "We would not use such weapons." The Russian Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, first began by calling for a "professional" forensic investigation, then concluded that the rebels were responsible for a "premeditated provocation". This made any UN Security Council consensus on reaching a resolution obviously impossible.
If these reports are confirmed, they will amount to the single deadliest deployment of chemical weapons since Saddam Hussein gassed Iraqi Kurds at Halabja in 1988. They will also undoubtedly embarrass whatever remains of the Obama administration's policy on Syria. A year ago to the day, the president established his so-called "red line" against the Assad regime's use or mass mobilization of chemical weapons. But since then, and as more evidence of such use (and such mobilization) has accrued and been corroborated by a host of Western and regional intelligence agencies, Washington's position has been quietly "revised." One unnamed U.S. intelligence official put it like this to Foreign Policy earlier in the week: "As long as they keep the body count at a certain level, we won't do anything."
Leaving aside what an official in even this White House might imaginatively characterize as the appropriate number of asphyxiated per day, it seems clear that a new benchmark has indeed been reached. The deaths of so many in so little time, whatever caused them, cannot have been faked.
"The White House is going to be hard pressed to construct an answer to this one," Charles Duelfer, a former U.S. weapons inspector, told the Guardian. "It was easy to waffle a bit so long as alleged use was minor and didn't happen again, but this is really putting the administration in a corner."
I wish I shared Duelfer's expectation of what it now takes to shame the United States into action in the Middle East. But perhaps the least that can be said of this latest dispatch from hell is that yesterday was not the best of all days for Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to write to Congress yet again reaffirming his boss's opposition to military intervention in Syria.
