Al-Assad: West, US Blocking Idlib’s ‘Chemical Incident’ Investigation

Local Editor

In an exclusive interview with Sputnik, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stressed that his government demanded sending UN experts to investigate the alleged Khan Shaykhun chemical attack, however its request remains unanswered due to US and other Western countries' pressure.

"We formally sent a letter to the United Nations, we asked them in that letter to send a delegation in order to investigate what happened in Khan Shaykhun," al-Assad said.

"Of course till this moment they didn't send [the experts], because the West and the US blocked any delegation from coming," he added.

The Syrian President believes that Washington is hampering the probe because if the experts arrive in Idlib, as he was quoted saying: "they will find that all their [the US] narratives about what happened in Khan Shaykhun and then the attack on Shayrat airport was a false flag, was a lie."

"Now the only contact I think is between Russia and maybe the other countries in order to send that delegation. Till this moment, we didn't have any positive news regarding any delegation coming," he added.

On April 4, an alleged chemical attack killed dozens of people in the town of Khan Shaykhun in Syria's Idlib province.

Without any investigation carried out, the US labeled al-Assad's government as perpetrators and fired a barrage of Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat airbase, which it said was the source of the attack.

"Actually, since the first attack a few years ago that happened in Aleppo by the terrorists against our army, we asked the United Nations to send investigation delegation in order to prove what we said about the terrorists having gases used against our army, and later many incidents happened in that way, and they didn't send any delegation. It's the same now," al-Assad further noted.

Earlier this week, Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons [OPCW] said that it is identifying sarin in samples related to the April 5 incident.

However, the watchdog never explained how it obtained the samples, as its experts have not visited Khan Shaykhun yet.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team