It was a hot, windless summer night, just after 2 a.m., when a barrage of rockets slammed into the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta.
The explosions were small and sounded like duds, rescuers said, but within minutes as they went to check the bomb sites for casualties, they found people choking and shaking and foaming at the mouth. Soon, people were dying in droves.
The attack on eastern Ghouta and Moadamiya, two rebel-held suburbs of the Syrian capital, on Aug. 21, 2013, was the single deadliest episode of Syria’s 13-year civil war. At least 1,500 people died, rescue workers and those who dug the graves said in interviews. Men, women and children were smothered as they slept beneath open windows by a silent, odorless killer: Sarin gas, a nerve agent.
President Barack Obama had warned Syria that if it used chemical weapons like Sarin, which is prohibited under international conventions, it would be crossing a “red line.” But when the attacks occurred, no military or judicial action was taken. Neither President Bashar al-Assad nor his loyalists were held accountable.
Today, Mr. al-Assad, who has taken refuge in Russia since he was overthrown by a rebel offensive in December, faces charges of war crimes for the attack in a case being prepared in France, as do 22 of his associates. Yet, protected by the Russian government, he is unlikely ever to face justice.
Investigators and key witnesses point to the Sarin attacks, among several others during the war, as a signature of the cruelty of Mr. al-Assad’s government and his desperation to cling to power.
By mid-2013, the peaceful demonstrations of the Arab Spring had long since degenerated into an armed insurrection in Syria. Rebel militias had seized control of neighborhoods in the main cities, and even threatened the capital.
“It was a strategic moment on the battlefield when Assad was losing,” said Brig. Gen. Zaher al-Saket, a former Syrian Army commander who is one of the most important witnesses in the case.
“When Assad made this kind of decision, his intention was to terrify people, to make a show of force and to keep the hard-liners in his own entourage with him,” said the brigadier, who defected in 2012, after refusing orders to use chemical weapons against rebel forces.
The Sarin gas, he said, was fired on direct orders of the president himself — no one else had such authority — though Mr. al-Assad has denied responsibility for the attacks. It was provided by Russia and assembled with the help of Iranian specialists, he added.
Since Mr. al-Assad’s ouster, survivors have returned home, opening old wounds. They have reunited with friends and relatives after years of enforced exile.
But they have also found rubble and abandoned ruins in much of their old neighborhood, as well as the mass graves where so many of their relatives and neighbors who died had been buried.
For those who survived, even nearly 12 years later the horrors of that night remain undimmed.
Former rescue workers still suffer the effects of the gas, “poor eyesight, broken teeth, brain fog and tightness of the chest,” one of them, Hani al-Malla, said in an interview.
Another former rescuer, Akram al-Baladi, recalled that people shouted warnings that it was a chemical attack, but he said that they were all volunteers and had no experience or training in how to respond to one.
“I did not know what that was,” he said. “We thought we were all going to die.”
They wrapped towels round their faces, dousing them with vinegar in an attempt to protect themselves, and worked through the night to evacuate the sick. Many rescuers and medical staff died. Others were temporarily blinded by the gas.
Under constant bombardment, they drove without lights to avoid being targeted by government forces.
People were falling dead on the streets, Mr. al-Baladi said, adding: “We were frightened we would drive over bodies.”
His cousin, wife and three children all collapsed and died on the street as they were trying to climb into their car to flee, he said.
There were several underground medical centers in the neighborhood, but they soon filled with patients. Rescuers laid the women and children inside and had to put the men on the street.
Yasser Muhammad al-Suleiman, with his brother, was helping evacuate people but went home to warn the rest of the family to leave. He watched with relief as their taillights disappeared down the street, when suddenly another rocket exploded behind him in his neighbor’s sheep pen.
He was almost overcome by the gas, but managed to stagger the few yards to the nearby first aid post and collapsed unconscious on the stairs.
“My teeth are all broken because I was clenching my teeth so hard to stop myself shaking,” he said. “I was shivering and foaming at the mouth.”
His brother, who was inside the house, did not survive. The neighbor’s family of 11 and all their sheep died, too.
Two hours later, across the city in Moadamiya, another four rockets hit. Men attending early morning prayers at a mosque were among the first victims.
Mohanad al-Khattib, a dentist, was awakened by a call from the nearby hospital where he volunteered. Patients were showing symptoms of suffocation, he was told. He grabbed a surgical mask, all he had, and set out on foot.
The streets were empty but as he passed some eucalyptus trees, he saw the ground was littered with dead birds. “I started running,” he recalled.
The hospital was already overflowing with the dead and dying. “There wasn’t even room to stand,” he said. Doctors were administering atropine to patients, but they were so short of syringes they had to reuse needles until they became blunt. There was no oxygen, so they used hand pumps to help people who were struggling to breathe.
They moved the dead to a house across the street, but as more and more sick people arrived, they had to lay them in the street in front and down a side alley. “People were on the ground, some dead, some alive,” he said. “Their breathing was labored, rasping, and their eyes were protruding. I had never seen that before.”
The victims were overwhelmingly civilians. The chemical strikes hit a good mile or two from the front line, where rebel fighters were guarding the approaches against government troops. But immediately after those attacks they came under one of the heaviest bombardments any of them had experienced.
“They did not use the gas attack only to kill people,” Mr. al-Malla said. “They used it to prepare for an attack.”
Brigadier al-Saket, the war crimes witness, escaped Syria with his entire unit. He said the Sarin was prepared and fired from the Sharyat air base, which was targeted by U.S. airstrikes in 2017 after a subsequent Sarin gas attack.
Army officers involved in developing Sarin and other gases used to talk in front of him about their work with the Russian and Iranian specialists, he said.
A rebel fighter, Seif Alddin al-Dahla, said in an interview that he was fighting on the frontline that night and so avoided the gas attack. But his entire family — his parents, brother and three sisters — were at home, and all died. His father was found trying to place towels on his children’s faces.
Mr. al-Dahla was at a forward position at 5 a.m. when a call came over the radio from his uncle to come home to help his family.
He raced by motorbike through an underground tunnel the fighters had built to protect their supply line and reached the hospital within minutes.
His uncle was standing at the entrance weeping. Inside, the floors were littered with bodies, Mr. al-Dahla recalled. Among the dead he found his father and two sisters, the youngest, Roua, only 4 years old.
“The regime could not defeat us,” Mr. al-Dahla, said. “So they showed their strength against women and children. They used rockets and airstrikes against our families to defeat us.”
Carlotta Gall is a senior correspondent, covering the war in Ukraine.
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