Global chemical arms inspectors are to take the unprecedented step of exhuming some bodies of victims in the Syrian town of Douma as they work to verify last month’s alleged chemical attack, a media report said on Thursday.
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) director-general Ahmet Uzumcu told the Financial Times that the organization’s fact-finding mission had already gathered more than 100 “environmental samples” since getting access to the site northeast of Damascus on April 21.
The OPCW’s mission to Douma was launched after footage from an apparent April 7 onslaught horrified the world and prompted unparallelled strikes on Syrian military installations, but inspectors, in a bid to find further evidence of alleged chlorine and sarin use in the attack, in which medics and rescuers say more than 40 people were killed, are now looking at “ways to exhume and take some biomedical samples,” Uzumcu said.
“It is a very sensitive process. That’s why they are very cautious. Although our experts have been able to attend some autopsies in the past, this is going to be the first time we have exhumed bodies,” he told the newspaper.
The Hague, Netherlands-based OPCW confirmed that inspectors are indeed looking to conduct autopsies on the bodies, adding that the fact-finding mission “is continuing to explore all avenues for collecting evidence.”
Uzumcu told the Financial Times that it could be a month before the mission publishes its report on Douma, but another OPCW official said that it “is premature to speculate as to when the report will be ready for sharing” with the watchdog’s member states.
The OPCW mission gained access to Douma on April 21 after several delays, but experts have said chemical traces — if they existed — could still be found, including in the bodies of the alleged victims.
Damascus and Moscow have accused Syrian volunteer rescue workers known as the White Helmets of staging the video footage at the behest of the US and its allies.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency and the Pentagon on Monday said that some North Korean troops have been killed during combat against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region. Those are the first reported casualties since the US and Ukraine announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost three-year war. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said that about 30 North Korean troops were killed or wounded during a battle with the Ukrainian army at the weekend. The casualties occurred around three villages in Kursk, where Russia has for four months been trying to quash a
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
ROYAL TARGET: After Prince Andrew lost much of his income due to his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, he became vulnerable to foreign agents, an author said British lawmakers failed to act on advice to tighten security laws that could have prevented an alleged Chinese spy from targeting Britain’s Prince Andrew, a former attorney general has said. Dominic Grieve, a former lawmaker who chaired the British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) until 2019, said ministers were advised five years ago to introduce laws to criminalize foreign agents, but failed to do so. Similar laws exist in the US and Australia. “We remain without an important weapon in our armory,” Grieve said. “We asked for [this law] in the context of the Russia inquiry report” — which accused the government
TRUDEAU IN TROUBLE: US president-elect Donald Trump reacted to Chrystia Freeland’s departure, saying: ‘Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on Monday quit in a surprise move after disagreeing with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over US president-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threats. The resignation of Freeland, 56, who also stepped down as finance minister, marked the first open dissent against Trudeau from within his Cabinet, and could threaten his hold on power. Liberal leader Trudeau lags 20 points in polls behind his main rival, Conservative Pierre Poilievre, who has tried three times since September to topple the government and force a snap election. “It’s not been an easy day,” Trudeau said at a fundraiser Monday evening, but
RSS