Posted April 14, 2017 00:12:57
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says a poison gas attack blamed on his Government last week was "100 per cent fabrication" used to justify a US air strike.
Syria's military had given up all its chemical weapons in 2013 after an agreement made at the time, and would not have used them anyway, Mr Assad was quoted as saying in an interview with news agency AFP.
The United States and its allies say the Syrian military carried out the attack in Idlib province, something Syria has already denied.
The April 4 attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun killed scores of people and prompted the United States to launch a cruise missile strike on a Syrian air base in response, its first direct assault on the Assad Government in the six-year-old conflict.
Mr Assad said Syria would only allow an "impartial" investigation into the poison gas incident.
On Wednesday, Damascus ally Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution to condemn the attack and push the Syrian Government to cooperate with investigators.
Russia said the gas was part of rebel stockpiles, which the rebels have denied.
It was the deadliest such incident since a sarin gas attack killed hundreds of people in a rebel-held suburb of Damascus in 2013, prompting threats of US military action.
Samples taken from Khan Sheikhoun last week tested positive for the nerve agent sarin, the British delegation at the global chemical weapons watchdog OPCW said on Thursday.
Reuters
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