UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has promised a "strong and united" response in case chemical weapons are used by Syrian government forces.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th September, 2018) UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has promised a "strong and united" response in case chemical weapons are used by Syrian government forces.
Earlier the day, the Russian Center for Syrian Reconciliation said the filming of a staged provocation with the alleged use of chemical weapons had begun in the Idlib province. A Syrian human rights activist later told Sputnik that Dozens of White Helmets arrived from Turkey to Idlib in order to conduct the false flag operation. He said they had tanks containing an unknown gas with them. The Russian military said that the gas was a chlorine-based toxic substance.
"If the regime in Syria repeats its horrible use of chemical weapons then our response will be strong and united," Hunt said on Twitter.
On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported citing unnamed officials that Syrian President Bashar Assad had "approved the use of chlorine gas in an offensive against the country's last major rebel stronghold" in Idlib. The publication added that the US Defense Department may be mulling the idea of striking Russian or Iranian military forces aiding the Syrian government if they were to launch an assault on Idlib. The report added that the United States would specifically decide whether to strike Russian air defense installations. A Pentagon official did not confirm this information to Sputnik.
Konstantin Kosachev, the chairman of the Russian parliament upper house foreign affairs committee, said he believes that only those who personally communicated with the future perpetrators of the attack could have such information about place and time of this "bloody crime."
"Nobody is confused by the absurdity of allegations against the Syrian army and president Assad, who is least interested in violating international norms on the eve of the liberation of the last patch of the Syrian territory and the subsequent political settlement," Kosachev said on Facebook.
Russia has warned of the planned false flag operation since late August. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said that terrorists of the Tahrir al-Sham group (affiliated with the Jabhat Fatah al Sham terror organization, banned in Russia) were preparing the false flag chemical attack to provoke foreign intervention in the country.
On Monday, US National Security Adviser John Bolton said that the United States, Britain and France have agreed that any use of chemical weapons by the government of Syria would result in a much stronger response than in previous incidents. The last Western attack on Syria took place after April's chemical incident in Duma, which was blamed on Damascus by Syrian militants and Western governments. Syria called the Duma incident a false flag operation, stressing that it got rid of its chemical weapons stockpile with the oversight of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
