Aleppo bombardment included suspected chlorine gas attack


A new round of Russian and Syrian airstrikes this week that closed all hospitals, killed nearly 300 people, and injured almost 1,000 more in the besieged, rebel-held area of eastern Aleppo, Syria, is believed to have included a chlorine gas attack.
The chemical weapon, dropped in a barrel bomb by a helicopter, is responsible for the death of a family of six, the Aleppo Media Center activist group reported. CNN was not able to independently verify the report, but a United Nations investigation in August found the Syrian government twice used chlorine gas as a weapon while Islamic State militants used mustard gas at least once.
The United States condemned "in the strongest terms these horrific attacks" in a statement Saturday, and on Sunday, the Syrian government rejected a UN proposal for an Aleppo truce.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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