Focus: The Latemenah and Khan Sheikhoun Sarin Attacks – Nov 9, 2017

For months I have refrained to assign blame for the Khan Sheikhoun sarin attack either to the Syrian army or the opposition due to the absence of conclusive publicly available evidence. It looks that now we may be near the solution of this mystery. The OPCW Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) has published a report on the Latamenah incident on March 30, 2017 which happened just 5 days before the Khan Sheikhoun attack. The report concludes that ‘sarin was more than likely used as a chemical weapon on 30 March 2017 in the south of Latamenah.’ The report includes also an Annex with photos of munition parts of the chemical bomb that were collected from the site. 

Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat finds that the remains of a Latamenah munition part is ‘identical in design to a filling cap recovered from the crater in Khan Sheikhoun’ and concludes that the same munition was used in both attacks. Another Latamenah munition part, a metal rail, appears to be similar a to a Khan Sheikhoun’s one. Also the chemical composition of the sarin used in Latamenah matches the sarin used in Khan Sheikhoun. More about this on a second article by the Bellingcat investigative team. Based on this discoveries, it is most likely that the same type of chemical bomb was used both in Latamenah and Khan Sheikhoun. Unlike Khan Sheikhoun which had only two unidentified remnants of the chemical bomb, the Latamenah munitions parts which resemble a tail section, tail fins and fuse may lead to the identification of the type of chemical bomb used and by whom.

According to  the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission, Western countries and Bellingcat the chemical bomb used in Latamenah and Khan Sheikhoun was a munition aidropped by the Syrian army. According to the crowdsourced Rootclaim tweets 123, and 4 it may be a ‘Hell Cannon’, the Syrian opposition artillery launcher whose main ammunition of choice is a propane gas cylinder. 

To contact Bartolo email peaceloverblog[at]gmail[dot]com (replacing [at] with @, [dot] with .)

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