The Syria Civil Defence renews its position to prevent the use of chemical weapons and calls for holding Assad regime accountable

The Syria Civil Defence renews in a statement on 24 March 2024, its stance of the necessity to prevent the use of chemical weapons anywhere and under any circumstances.

The Syria Civil Defence’s statement came on the anniversary of Assad regime chemical attack on Lataminah in Hama countryside.

The statement called on the necessity to hold Assad regime accountable for using chemical weapons and to ensure that Assad regime has not go unpunished. The statement also called for achieving justice for the victims of chemical attacks and their families, who suffered from the horrible repercussions of this grave violation and the appalling use of these weapons.

The Syria Civil Defence said in the statement that “Assad regime launched on March 24, 2017, a chemical attack on Lataminah city in northern Hama countryside, followed by two similar attacks on 25th and 30th March 2017.

The Syria Civil Defence affirmed that Assad regime is responsible for these three attacks, adding that the strategic nature of these attacks occurred only under orders from the highest levels in Assad regime, according to the final report of the Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) issued in April 2020.

The foreign ministers of the US, UK, France, and Germany previously condemned in a joint statement, in the strongest terms, the Assad regime’s repeated use of chemical weapons, and affirmed their commitment to holding accountable the perpetrators of all chemical weapons attacks in Syria and abroad.

The foreign ministers called on, in their statement, Russia to stop protecting the Assad regime from accountability for its use of chemical weapons.

For its part, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) welcomed the report of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which proved that the Assad regime carried out a chemical weapons attack on the city of Douma in April 2018, pointing out that it contributed to this report by sharing many data and witnesses.