The Syrian foreign ministry said on Sunday that the government had agreed to give United Nations inspectors access to a site where a chemical weapons attack was said to have killed hundreds of civilians.
In the statement on the state-run SANA news agency, the ministry said the two sides were working to set a date for the visit, though the United Nations said in its own statement that inspectors would begin an on-site inspection beginning on Monday.
The foreign ministry said that Syria was ready to cooperate with the inspectors “to expose the false allegations of the terrorist groups accusing the Syrian forces of using chemical weapons.”
The government has denied that it used chemical weapons, and on Saturday it said its soldiers had found chemical supplies in areas seized from rebel forces. Russia, an ally of the Syrian government led by President Bashar al-Assad, accused the rebels of using the weapons, but few analysts believe they have the supplies or ability to do so.
On Saturday, an international aid group said that on the morning of the reported attack, medical centers it supported near the site had received more than 3,000 patients showing symptoms consistent with exposure to toxic nerve agents.
Of those, 355 died, said the group, Doctors Without Borders.
The statement was the first issued by an international organization working in Syria about the attack on Wednesday in the suburbs northeast of Damascus. Anti-government activists have said that hundreds of people were killed when government forces pelted the area with rockets spewing poisoned gas.
Determining the nature of the attack on Wednesday could affect the course of Western involvement in the war, and the United States, Russia and others had been calling for a United Nations team, sent to Syria to investigate past suspected chemical weapons use, to be given access to the latest site.
Doctors Without Borders said it could not confirm what substances caused the symptoms it reported on Saturday or who was responsible for the attack, but its report appears to lend credibility to other accounts by witnesses and to the opposition’s estimates of the number of dead.
The aid group said the symptoms were reported by three medical facilities it supported in the area of the reported attack. The group’s statement said that during three hours on Wednesday morning, the clinics received about 3,600 patients who had symptoms indicating exposure to a chemical nerve agent, including breathing problems, dilated pupils, convulsions, foaming at the mouth and blurred vision. Many of the medics in the centers also experienced some symptoms, said Stephen Cornish, one of the group’s executive directors. One of the medics died.
“When you put these elements together,” he said, “what it suggests to us is a neurotoxic agent.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday that it had confirmed the deaths of 322 people in the attack, including 54 children, 82 women, 16 people who could not be identified and dozens of rebel fighters. The group, based in Britain, said its activists had visited the area, spoken to residents and collected medical reports and videos indicating that most of the people dead were killed by exposure to toxic gas.
Last year, President Obama called the use of chemical arms in Syria a red line that could prompt a harsh American response, but recent statements by American officials saying they believed that Mr. Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons “on a small scale” several times in the past year have not led to a significant public change in American involvement in the war.
Mr. Obama has supported an investigation into Wednesday’s attack, but he has expressed hesitance about getting the United States involved militarily. After the president met with his national security staff on Wednesday, the White House issued a statement, slightly less assertive than the British one, saying that American intelligence agencies were still trying to “gather facts to ascertain what occurred.”
The White House said Mr. Obama “received a detailed review of a range of potential options” at the meeting, but the statement did not specify what the options were.
Stepping up the pace of consultations, Secretary of State John Kerry made a series of calls on Saturday to his counterparts in Turkey, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Mr. Kerry also called Nabil Elaraby, the secretary general of the Arab League.
In those calls, Mr. Kerry underscored the “gravity of any chemical weapons use” and stressed the importance of quickly determining the facts, a senior State Department official said.
Pentagon officials said Saturday that Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would leave for Jordan this weekend to attend a long-scheduled meeting of regional military chiefs at which the situation in Syria was certain to be discussed. Pentagon officials also said that the Navy had increased its presence in the eastern Mediterranean Sea to four destroyers, each carrying long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles similar to those launched in past American attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
The Navy historically has deployed two destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean, but had quietly added one more over recent months. The Navy’s commander in the region added a fourth, at least temporarily, by delaying a scheduled return to port for one warship and accelerating the arrival of its replacement.
While the Syrian government has not publicly responded to the demands to let inspectors visit the site, on Saturday it stepped up its efforts to blame rebels for the attack, first announcing on state-run television that its soldiers had found a tunnel filled with chemical compounds near the attack site and that some of the soldiers were choking and had to be evacuated.
Also, in an interview with Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV, Syria’s information minister, Omran al-Zoubi, dismissed the possibility of an American attack, warning that such a move would risk triggering more violence in the region, reported The Associated Press. “The basic repercussion would be a ball of fire that would burn not only Syria but the whole Middle East,” Mr. Zoubi said. “An attack on Syria would be no easy trip.”
Michael R. Gordon and Thom Shanker contributed reporting.
In the statement on the state-run SANA news agency, the ministry said the two sides were working to set a date for the visit, though the United Nations said in its own statement that inspectors would begin an on-site inspection beginning on Monday.
The foreign ministry said that Syria was ready to cooperate with the inspectors “to expose the false allegations of the terrorist groups accusing the Syrian forces of using chemical weapons.”
The government has denied that it used chemical weapons, and on Saturday it said its soldiers had found chemical supplies in areas seized from rebel forces. Russia, an ally of the Syrian government led by President Bashar al-Assad, accused the rebels of using the weapons, but few analysts believe they have the supplies or ability to do so.
On Saturday, an international aid group said that on the morning of the reported attack, medical centers it supported near the site had received more than 3,000 patients showing symptoms consistent with exposure to toxic nerve agents.
Of those, 355 died, said the group, Doctors Without Borders.
The statement was the first issued by an international organization working in Syria about the attack on Wednesday in the suburbs northeast of Damascus. Anti-government activists have said that hundreds of people were killed when government forces pelted the area with rockets spewing poisoned gas.
Determining the nature of the attack on Wednesday could affect the course of Western involvement in the war, and the United States, Russia and others had been calling for a United Nations team, sent to Syria to investigate past suspected chemical weapons use, to be given access to the latest site.
Doctors Without Borders said it could not confirm what substances caused the symptoms it reported on Saturday or who was responsible for the attack, but its report appears to lend credibility to other accounts by witnesses and to the opposition’s estimates of the number of dead.
The aid group said the symptoms were reported by three medical facilities it supported in the area of the reported attack. The group’s statement said that during three hours on Wednesday morning, the clinics received about 3,600 patients who had symptoms indicating exposure to a chemical nerve agent, including breathing problems, dilated pupils, convulsions, foaming at the mouth and blurred vision. Many of the medics in the centers also experienced some symptoms, said Stephen Cornish, one of the group’s executive directors. One of the medics died.
“When you put these elements together,” he said, “what it suggests to us is a neurotoxic agent.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday that it had confirmed the deaths of 322 people in the attack, including 54 children, 82 women, 16 people who could not be identified and dozens of rebel fighters. The group, based in Britain, said its activists had visited the area, spoken to residents and collected medical reports and videos indicating that most of the people dead were killed by exposure to toxic gas.
Last year, President Obama called the use of chemical arms in Syria a red line that could prompt a harsh American response, but recent statements by American officials saying they believed that Mr. Assad’s forces had used chemical weapons “on a small scale” several times in the past year have not led to a significant public change in American involvement in the war.
Mr. Obama has supported an investigation into Wednesday’s attack, but he has expressed hesitance about getting the United States involved militarily. After the president met with his national security staff on Wednesday, the White House issued a statement, slightly less assertive than the British one, saying that American intelligence agencies were still trying to “gather facts to ascertain what occurred.”
The White House said Mr. Obama “received a detailed review of a range of potential options” at the meeting, but the statement did not specify what the options were.
Stepping up the pace of consultations, Secretary of State John Kerry made a series of calls on Saturday to his counterparts in Turkey, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Mr. Kerry also called Nabil Elaraby, the secretary general of the Arab League.
In those calls, Mr. Kerry underscored the “gravity of any chemical weapons use” and stressed the importance of quickly determining the facts, a senior State Department official said.
Pentagon officials said Saturday that Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would leave for Jordan this weekend to attend a long-scheduled meeting of regional military chiefs at which the situation in Syria was certain to be discussed. Pentagon officials also said that the Navy had increased its presence in the eastern Mediterranean Sea to four destroyers, each carrying long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles similar to those launched in past American attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
The Navy historically has deployed two destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean, but had quietly added one more over recent months. The Navy’s commander in the region added a fourth, at least temporarily, by delaying a scheduled return to port for one warship and accelerating the arrival of its replacement.
While the Syrian government has not publicly responded to the demands to let inspectors visit the site, on Saturday it stepped up its efforts to blame rebels for the attack, first announcing on state-run television that its soldiers had found a tunnel filled with chemical compounds near the attack site and that some of the soldiers were choking and had to be evacuated.
Also, in an interview with Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV, Syria’s information minister, Omran al-Zoubi, dismissed the possibility of an American attack, warning that such a move would risk triggering more violence in the region, reported The Associated Press. “The basic repercussion would be a ball of fire that would burn not only Syria but the whole Middle East,” Mr. Zoubi said. “An attack on Syria would be no easy trip.”
Michael R. Gordon and Thom Shanker contributed reporting.