REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, DAMASCUS - UN experts collected samples and testimony from Syrian doctors and victims of an alleged chemical weapons attack Monday following a treacherous journey through government and opposition-held territory, where their convoy was hit by snipers.
President Bashar Assad's government vowed to defend itself against any international attack, warning that such an intervention would ignite turmoil across the region. While US Secretary of State John Kerry said chemical weapons were used in Syria and he accused Assad's regime of destroying evidence. He said the US has additional information about the attack and will make it public in the days ahead.
"The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity. By any standard, it is inexcusable and — despite the excuses and equivocations that some have manufactured — it is undeniable," said Kerry, the highest-ranking US official to confirm the attack.
"This international norm cannot be violated without consequences," he said.
It also would bring the US closer to a conflict that has killed more than 100,000 people since Assad cracked down on Arab Spring-inspired protesters in March 2011. Syria's civil war has been increasingly defined by sectarian killings between the Sunni-led opposition and Assad's regime, dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
It would essentially pit the US and regional allies Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar in a proxy war against Iran, which is providing weapons to the Syrian government's counterinsurgency, along with Hezbollah, the Lebanese group that also has aided Assad's forces militarily.
It's also unclear what US action would mean for relations with Russia, which warned Monday against the use of force not sanctioned by the UN Security Council, calling it "a crude violation of international law."
Support for some sort of international military response was likely to grow if it is confirmed that Assad's regime was responsible for the Aug. 21 attack in the Damascus suburbs that activists say killed hundreds of people. The group Doctors Without Borders put the death toll at 355.
Snipers opened fire on the UN convoy, hitting one of the vehicles carrying a team on its way to investigate the Aug. 21 incident. Martin Nesirky, a spokesman for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said one of the UN vehicles was "deliberately shot at multiple times" in the buffer zone between rebel- and government-controlled territory, adding that the team was safe.
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