Asia

Asia

Syria has neither chemical weapons nor facilities to make them - al-Assad

03 June 2017 22:37 (UTC +04:00)

Syria has neither chemical weapons nor facilities to manufacture them, President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview with Indian WION news channel. SANA news agency released the text of the interview on Saturday, APA reports quoting TASS.

Al-Assad claims that behind the chemical attack in the town of Khan-Shaykhun on April 4 were "the United States and the Western intelligence with the terrorists. They staged this play just to have a pretext to attack Syria, and that’s what happened a few days later when they attacked our airport."

"And they wanted to demonize again, to re-demonize the Syrian state and the Syrian President. So, this is the only headline that could capture the audience and the public opinion around the world," he said.

On April 4, the town of Khan-Shaykhun in Syria’s Idlib region was hit by an alleged chemical attack. The Russian Defense Ministry said the Syrian aircraft had bombed the workshops then where terrorists were producing munitions with chemical agents supplied to Iraq and used in Aleppo. Washington accused the Syrian government of the attack. US President Donald Trump ordered a missile strike on an air base in the Syrian Homs Governorate and the US military fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles on it from warships in the Mediterranean in early hours of April 7.