A graphic released by the White House yesterday  shows a map of the area around Damascus that the US government is using to accompany its assessment of the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons on August 21. An intelligence assessment released by the US says there is a “high confidence that the Syrian government carried out the August 21 chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs”.

Reuters/Washington

The US yesterday made clear that it would punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the “brutal and flagrant” chemical weapons attack that it says killed more than 1,400 people in Damascus last week.

“We cannot accept a world where women and children and innocent civilians are gassed on a terrible scale,” President Barack Obama told reporters at the White House.

He said the US was still in the planning process for a “limited, narrow” military response that would not involve “boots on the ground” or be open-ended.

Earlier, Secretary of State John Kerry said it was essential not to let Syria get away with the attack, partly as a sign to those who might consider using chemical weapons in the future. He said the US was joined by allies including France, “our oldest ally”, in its determination to act.

“History would judge us all extraordinarily harshly if we turned a blind eye to a dictator’s wanton use of weapons of mass destruction,” Kerry said in a televised statement. 

“If a thug and a murderer like Bashar al-Assad can gas thousands of his own people with impunity,” it would set a bad example for others, such as Iran, Hezbollah and North Korea, Kerry said.

“Will they remember that the Assad regime was stopped from those weapons’ current or future use? Or will they remember that the world stood aside and created impunity?” Kerry said.

Kerry laid out a raft of evidence he said showed Assad’s forces were behind the attack, and the US government released an unclassified intelligence report at the same time including many of the details.

The report said the August 21 attack killed 1,429 Syrian civilians, including 426 children.

The intelligence gathered for the US report included an intercepted communication by a senior official intimately familiar with the attack as well as other intelligence from people’s accounts and intercepted messages, the four-page report said.

France said earlier yesterday that it still backed military action to punish Assad’s government for the attack despite a British parliamentary vote against a military strike.

An aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, a close Assad ally, seized on Thursday’s British “no” vote which set back US-led efforts to intervene against Assad, saying it reflected wider European worries about the dangers of a military response. 

Any military strike looks unlikely at least until UN weapons inspectors leave Syria today.

Kerry said the president had been clear that any action would be “limited and tailored” to punishing Assad, that it would not be intended to affect the civil war there and that Washington remained committed to a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

The timing of any strikes may be complicated by Obama’s departure late on Tuesday for Sweden and a G20 summit in Russia. He was not expected to order the strikes while in Sweden or Russia. 

Qatar expresses concern

Qatar is following with concern the latest developments in Syria and the acts of killing, destruction and genocide, a Foreign Ministry source said yesterday,

Qatar reiterated its condemnation of the use by the Syrian regime of chemical weapons against innocent people, the Qatar News Agency (QNA) quoted the source as saying in a statement. The source emphasised Qatar’s support to the resolutions adopted by the Arab League’s permanent delegates who held the Syrian regime fully accountable for the shelling of the innocent with chemical weapons. The source further stated that Qatar held the international community responsible for protecting the Syrian people against any chemical attack that could be launched by the unjust and unfair Damascus regime.