\nANKARA: Militant opposition fighters in northern Syria are preparing a \u201cstaged\u201d chemical gas attack, Russia claimed on Saturday, amid growing speculation that an Assad regime assault on Idlib province is imminent.<\/p>\n
\nMoscow\u2019s accusation comes after US President Donald Trump\u2019s national security adviser John Bolton this week said Washington will respond \u201cvery strongly\u201d if Syrian President Bashar Assad uses chemical weapons in an offensive to retake Idlib, one of the last rebel held provinces in the country.<\/p>\n
\nRussian defense ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement that the extremist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham is \u201cpreparing another provocation of the \u2018use of chemical weapons\u2019 by Syrian government forces against the peaceful population of the Idlib province.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nHe said the group delivered \u201ceight chlorine tanks\u201d to Jisr Al-Shughur town in order to \u201cstage\u201d the attack and that these were later taken to a village eight kilometers (5 miles) away.<\/p>\n
\nThe statement also said a group of militants \u201ctrained in handling poisonous substances under the supervision of specialists from the private British military company \u2018Oliva\u2019\u201d arrived in the town a day earlier.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe militants have the task of simulating the rescue of the victims of the chemical weapons attack dressed in the clothes of the famous \u2018White Helmets\u2019,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\nKonashenkov accused British special services of being \u201cactively involved\u201d in the \u201cprovocation\u201d which will \u201cserve as another reason for the US, the UK and France to hit Syrian government targets with air strikes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nIn April, the US, France and Britain launched joint missile strikes on Syrian targets in April in response to regime chemical weapons attack on the town of Douma.<\/p>\n
\nRussia and Syria claimed at the time that the Douma attack had been staged by the opposition. Now the militant group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham is \u201cpreparing another provocation of the \u2018use of chemical weapons\u2019 by Syrian regime forces against the peaceful population of Idlib province,\u201d Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\nRussia\u2019s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned the US against making any \u201creckless\u201d moves in Syria. \u201cWe are hearing ultimatums from Washington … and it does not affect our determination to continue our policy for the total elimination of terrorist epicenters in Syria and the return of this country to a normal life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nRussia presented proposals last week to Turkish authorities on resolving the situation in Idlib, the last opposition-held stronghold, and talks between Ankara and Moscow have intensified in the past two weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nExperts say Ankara is trying to prevent a regime assault on Idlib, and if it cannot be prevented, Turkey\u2019s objective will be to prevent the targeting of moderate opposition groups and civilians.<\/p>\n
\nTurkey, which hosts more than 3 million Syrian refugees, has sounded alarm bells over a potential influx from the province, where about 3.5 million civilians live. The intensified diplomatic traffic between Moscow and Ankara is feeding speculation about a Russian-supported assault by the Syrian regime on Idlib in the near term.<\/p>\n
\nIn Jerusalem on Wednesday, Bolton said Washington was \u201cconcerned about the possibility that Assad may use chemical weapons again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u201cJust so there\u2019s no confusion here, if the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons we will respond very strongly and they really ought to think about this a long time,\u201d Bolton said.<\/p>\n
\nSpeculation is increasing that there could be a Russian-backed government assault on Idlib, one of the so-called \u201cde-escalation\u201d zones set up as a result of talks by Russia, Turkey and Iran last year.<\/p>\n
\nOn a visit to Moscow on Friday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu warned Russia that seeking a military solution in Idlib would be a \u201ccatastrophe\u201d before meeting President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n
\nRussian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the situation in Idlib is \u201cmulti-faceted\u201d and called for separating out \u201cthe healthy opposition from terrorist structures.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nDamascus still holds the southeastern tip of Idlib, a strategically important province adjacent to Latakia on the Mediterranean coast that is home to Assad\u2019s clan.<\/p>\n
\nMore than 350,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since Syria\u2019s war started in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Syrian rebels planning chemical attack in Idlib to provoke US retaliation, Russia claims ANKARA: Militant opposition fighters in northern Syria are preparing a \u201cstaged\u201d chemical gas attack, Russia claimed on Saturday, amid growing speculation that an Assad regime assault on Idlib province is imminent. Moscow\u2019s accusation comes after US President Donald Trump\u2019s national security adviser…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}