Douma chemical attack survivors say OPCW report "came years too late"

Eyewitnesses to a 2018 chemical attack in Syria have criticised a recent report by a global chemical weapons watchdog, saying it came "too late" and calling for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the perpetrators to be held accountable.

The Hague-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) blamed the Syrian regime last week for the 2018 chlorine attack that killed over 40 people in Douma near Damascus.

Investigators said there were "reasonable grounds to believe" that at least one Syrian regime air force helicopter had dropped two cylinders of the toxic gas on the then rebel-held town of Douma during Syria's civil war.

"I was one of the paramedics who carried out ambulance operations to the hospital. The massacre was unnatural, and the women, men and children were all on the ground and had died," Muhammad Samer Hamriya told The New Arab’s sister site, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

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"The scene was very sad. I even saw many children among the victims. More than 50 children were dead, and in one case I was transporting three dead people in my car," he said as he remembered the horrors.

He recalled a man who was grabbing onto his clothes and pulling him as he struggled to breathe.

Hamriya rebuked the OPCW report, saying it came too late.

"My message is a message of reproach. They were very late in taking the decision to condemn Bashar al-Assad in the massacre. From the first moment the missiles fell, it is clear why they took years to condemn the regime," he said.

"They were five years late and now they issued a condemnation. The condemnation should be from the first hour of the massacre, not five years later."

The paramedic demanded that Assad and his regime be brought to justice before an international tribunal at The Hague.

Muhammad Saryoul, another paramedic during the attack, also said the step was late.

"This step comes very late after years of condemnation and no accountability. We need international accountability for the Assad regime for this massacre," he told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

He said a lack of accountability regarding previous attacks allowed the regime to repeat its crimes, pointing to the Adra and Zamalka massacres in 2012 and 2013.

The Syrian regime and its ally Russia, which intervened militarily in Syria in 2015, claimed the Douma attack was staged by rescue workers at the behest of the United States, which launched air strikes on Syria days afterwards along with Britain and France.

Damascus denies the use of chemical weapons and insists it has handed over its stockpiles under a 2013 agreement, prompted by a suspected sarin gas attack that killed 1,400 in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta.

Director General of the Chemical Violations Documentation Centre of Syria Nidal Sheikhani said the Syrian regime used internationally prohibited weapons 262 times during the Syrian conflict.

He told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the attacks resulted in the deaths of about 3,000 civilians and the injury of around 14,000 others.

The conflict in Syria is believed to have killed more than half a million people and displaced millions more, leaving many parts of the country in ruins mostly due to Assad regime and Russian artillery and airstrikes.