Intel: State Department backs up watchdog report on Syria chemical weapons use

The United States agrees with the recent assessment of a global chemical weapons watchdog that found the Syrian regime used banned weapons against its own people, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday. 

In a statement, Pompeo called the report from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) “the latest in a large and growing body of evidence that the [Bashar al-Assad] regime uses chemical weapons attacks in Syria as part of a deliberate campaign of violence against the Syrian people.”

“No amount of disinformation from Assad’s enablers in Russia and Iran can hide the fact that the Assad regime is responsible for numerous chemical weapons attacks,” he added. 

The OPCW report released Wednesday focused on three separate aerial attacks that dropped chlorine and the nerve agent sarin on the opposition-held village of Ltamenah in March 2017. The investigators concluded they had “reasonable grounds to believe” the Syrian air force was responsible for each of the chemical attacks.