Syria Military Loads Chemical Weapons, Awaits Order To Fire
Syrian chemical weapons ready to go
U.S.
officials say the Syrian military has loaded active chemical weapons
into bombs and is awaiting a final order from embattled President Bashar
Assad to use the deadly weapons against its own people.
NBC News reports
that on Wednesday the Syrian military loaded sarin gas into aerial
bombs that could be deployed from dozens of aircraft. The last
large-scale use of sarin was in 1988, when former Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein's forces killed 5,000 Kurds in a single attack.
However,
U.S. officials told NBC that the sarin bombs had not yet been loaded
onto planes but added if Assad gives the final order, "there's little
the outside world can do to stop it."
The Syrian government has previously insisted that it would not use chemical weapons against its own
people.
For
months, the Obama administration has described the Assad regime as
being on the verge of collapse. If the Syrian government were to be
toppled from outside forces or from within, it would bethe first nation possessing weapons of mass destruction to do so.
U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has as recently as last week warned
of the possibility that Assad could use chemical weapons against his own
people. After meeting other NATO foreign ministers in Brussels last
week, Clinton told the gathering, "Our concerns are that an increasingly
desperate Assad regime might turn to chemical weapons, or might lose
control of them to one of the many groups that are now operating within
Syria."
"We
have sent an unmistakable message that this would cross a red line and
those responsible would be held to account," she said.
At the end of the meeting, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen backed up Clinton's threat, declaring that the international community could take military action against Assad and his forces.
"The
possible use of chemical weapons would be completely unacceptable for
the whole international community and if anybody resorts to these
terrible weapons I would expect an immediate reaction from the
international community," Rasmussen told reporters. source - Yahoo News
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