Turkish autopsies confirm chemical weapons used in Syria attack that killed scores

BEIRUT – Autopsies conducted by Turkish doctors on Thursday have confirmed that chemical weapons were used in an attack which killed scores of people in Syria two days earlier, providing the most concrete evidence to date of why so many people were killed.

Dozens of victims from Tuesday's daybreak assault on the northwestern town of Khan Sheikhoun have been evacuated to Turkey for medical treatment. Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said the World Health Organization had supervised autopsies for three people, and that chemical agents had been detected.

He said the results would be sent to The Hague for further analysis.

The minister's comments came after Doctors Without Borders said that patients had shown symptoms consistent with exposure to a nerve agent, the use of which has previously caused the United States to threaten military intervention.

At least 70 people were killed in the attack, which eyewitnesses described as a fog of chemicals which enveloped men, women, and young children, leaving many to suffocate, choke, or foam at the mouth. At least one monitoring group, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the death toll had risen to at least 86.

Outside a hospital in the southern Turkish city of Reyhanli on Wednesday, medics in hazmat suits washed a newly arrived patient before ferrying him inside on a gurney.

Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem denied on Thursday that it had used chemical weapons in the past and maintained that it never would.

Speaking in Damascus, Moualem rejected the Turkish investigation, saying that the country's past experience with international inquiries had not been encouraging. He told reporters that a credible investigation into Tuesday's attack must begin from Damascus, not Turkey.

He added that rebel groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State have been storing chemical weapons brought from Iraq and Turkey in residential areas.

Russia, for its part, has backed the Syrian claim that the possible chemical attack resulted from an airstrike on rebel munitions. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the attack a "dangerous and monstrous crime," but criticized the West and others for blaming Syrian forces.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump accused Syrian Bashar Assad's government of going "beyond a red line" with the attack on civilians, and suggested that his anti-interventionist stance toward the conflict may be changing.

But there were few indications of what that might mean in practice. Syria's complex conflict has paralyzed a divided United Nations Security Council and left Western leaders reluctant to face the possible consequences of military intervention against Assad.

The top U.N. humanitarian envoy for Syria, Jan Egeland, called the attack a possible "watershed moment" that could force world leaders to take stronger action to ease the "suffering of the civilians that we see every day."

In an interview published Thursday, however, Assad insisted that a military victory was the government's only option. "We have no choice in facing this war, and that's why we are confident, we are persistent and we are determined," he told Vecernji List, a Croatian newspaper. His comments appeared to have come before Tuesday's attack.

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The Washington Post's Zakaria Zakaria in Antakya and Brian Murphy in Washington contributed to this report.