Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says video of child chemical-weapon victims was faked
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad ramped up his denial of responsibility for the April 4 sarin gas in Idlib province, The New York Times reports, saying that videos showing children killed in the incident were faked. Assad has countered U.S. claims that Syrian government forces conducted the attack by saying that his warplanes bombed a terrorist weapons depot that contained the chemical weapons, releasing them into the rebel-held area.
More than 80 people reportedly were killed by poison gas in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun, prompting President Trump to authorize firing 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Syrian base the U.S. believes launched the chemical attack.
"We don't know whether those dead children were killed in Khan Sheikhoun," Assad told Agence France-Presse in his first television interview since the bombing. "Were they dead at all?"
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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.
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