Al Assad should be accountable for gas attacks

A United Nations fact-finding commission has definitively put to rest claims by the Syrian regime that rebels were responsible for a deadly chemical weapons attack in Khan Shaikhoun, killing 80 civilians in April this year. While it should not be surprising that the regime constantly blames the victims when such atrocities occur, it is shocking and shameful that global reaction to holding it accountable for such crimes is so lacklustre, the Gulf News said in an editorial on Saturday.

The Dubai-based daily quoted the commission report as saying that Syrian forces have used chemical weapons more than two dozen times during the country’s civil war, whereby, "government forces continued the pattern of using chemical weapons against civilians in opposition-held areas."

"In their 14th report since 2011, UN investigators said they had in all documented 33 chemical weapons attacks to date, 27 of which were orchestrated by the Bashar Al Assad regime. The global outrage after the first gas attack by Al Assad in the Damascus suburb of Gouta in 2013 was extremely short-lived and the world quickly forgot.

"In that attack, the death toll has been put at anywhere between 300 and 1,700, including women and children," the paper continued.

"The world’s apathetic response to the Gouta attack emboldened Al Assad, which is why he was able to carry out even more chemical attacks on his own people thereafter. Even though the world has failed and continues to fail the Syrian people, it is important that such butchers be held accountable. If not, this will only set a dangerous precedent for other leaders around the world to commit similar atrocities with little or no recourse," the English language daily concluded.