The Nonsense Gassing of Militants in Saraqeb, February 2018
November 21, 2019
rough, incomplete,
ongoing edits to ...Nov. 24
On 7 April, 2018, some kind of illogical sarin-chlorine attack was initially blamed for the deaths of 180-200 in Douma, but claims later settled on "more than" a "verified" 42 people killed, and just by chlorine as it turns out (aside from illogically persistent suspicions in some quarters). That was and remains a bizarre record, and even the initial claim of both chlorine and sarin used together is borderline absurd. But it might have helped that there was a recent precedent.
Flash back two months .. someone across the country was announcing "Assad's" sneak peak. He'd been working for a while - allegedly - to sneak some sarin back in under cover of his unpunished chlorine attacks. On the night of 4 February, he had his helicopters drop two barrel bombs - filled with chlorine and somehow-sarin - on a field at the eastern edge of Saraqeb. As reported, the gas they released spread to only one place we heard about - a basement where 8 random men were doing nothing special that night. Luckily the usual heroes with the White Helmets rescued them, caught the signs and alerted the world, so we could be more prepared to accept the coming claims out of Douma. And this precedent comes with an implied (or explicit?) moral - No one showed due alarm and stopped Assad when just men were gassed by the chlorine-sarin bombs and none of them died. But maybe if we had, the nearly 42-187 victims in Douma - including women, children, infants - could have been saved.
Issues:
(in progress)
* Implausibility of mixing sarin and chlorine (the sarin would be weakened or destroyed, and the breakdown products would probably be different than what was found)
* Inconsistent symptoms (miosis noted but absent, eye irritation noted but lacking, "odd behavior" instead of paralysis, no SLUDGE syndrome)
* Militant victims passed off as civilians (at least one and probably all were wearing camouflage fatigues before they were stripped down for the videos)
* Others locals claiming an attack seem related to those militants (2 locals not in the shelter are heard from; one is an apparent father of a shelter victim, and the other is a possible brother of his, judging by their given names) * Spread A - not to the victims (their given location is perpendicular to the gas spread as evidenced by the areas of bleached grass)
* Spread B - to a lot of non-victims we haven't heard from (except those couple who seem related to the militants)
* Unexplained means of sarin dispersal (it would have to be stored and released separately to work at all, and as usual, this trick remains unexplained)
* Strange deformation of cylinders (an extremely even and total indentation of four circles in a cloverleaf pattern appears on both gas cylinders, and never before on any cylinders involved in any other attack)
* ...
Sources:
S/1626/2018
15 May 2018
https://www.opcw.org/sites/default/files/documents/S_series/2018/en/s-1626-2018_e_.pdf
Syrian Archive entry: SAR020418
Chemical attack on Saraqib, Idlib on 04 February 2018
https://syrianarchive.org/en/collections/chemical-weapons/database?incident=SAR020418
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/02/syria-witness-testimony-reveals-details-of-illegal-chemical-attack-on-saraqeb/
Syria: Witness testimony reveals details of illegal chemical attack on Saraqeb
6 February 2018, 16:59 UTC
BBC Arabic report w/possibly valuable information
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TjYLRh5YYc
SNHRreport: http://sn4hr.org/wp-content/pdf/english/Syrian_Regime’s_Chemical_Terrorism_Hits_Syrians_for_the_211th_Time_en.pdf
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2018/02/14/evidence-february-4th-2018-chlorine-attack-saraqib-idlib/
CNN Arwa Damon report with 2 related videos attached
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/13/middleeast/syria-chemical-attack-survivors-intl/index.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-attack-idUSKBN1FP27K
Syrians for Truth and Justice report (good Edlib media Center images, some Arabic text): https://stj-sy.org/ar/422/
STJ Hears that "12 civilians, including three members of the Civil Defense" were the casualties, while the Saraqeb city council has 6 civilians plus 3 WH (the WH tally of 9), and "the Syrian American Medical Association (SAMS) documented the reception of (11) cases of asphyxia" and no more. If any other locals were affected (some claim to have at least smelled it), this SAMS hospital didn't help them or doesn't vouch for it.
OPCW FFM Findings:
1.4 The FFM determined that chlorine, released from cylinders through mechanical
impact, was likely used as a chemical weapon on 4 February 2018 in the Al Talil
neighbourhood of Saraqib. This conclusion is based on:
(a) the presence of two cylinders, which were determined by the FFM as
previously containing chlorine;
(b) the testimony of witnesses, who identified the cylinders as impacting the
location on 4 February 2018;
(c) environmental analyses, demonstrating the unusual presence of chlorine in the
local environment; and
(d) a number of patients who presented for treatment at medical facilities shortly
after the incident, and showed signs and symptoms of irritation of tissue,
which were consistent with exposure to chlorine and other toxic chemicals.
1.5 The FFM also noted the presence of chemicals that can neither be explained as
occurring naturally in the environment nor as being related to chlorine. Furthermore,
some of the medical signs and symptoms reported were different to those that would
be expected from exposure to pure chlorine. There was insufficient information and
evidence to enable the FFM to draw any further conclusions on these chemicals at this
stage.
4.9 Environmental samples relating to the allegation of 4 February 2018 were collected
by an NGO on 5 February 2018 and were received by the FFM team on
19 February 2018. The samples were prepared for transport and delivered to the
OPCW Laboratory on 27 February 2018.
4 February 2018 – Narrative
5.8 Witnesses described the night of 4 February 2018 as cold with no precipitation and
virtually no wind. There was poor visibility due to low ambient light, and restricted
use of artificial light due to fear of being targeted by aircraft.
5.9 At approximately 21:00, eight men were taking shelter in a basement in the eastern
neighbourhood of Al Talil in the city of Saraqib when they heard a notification via
radio from a spotter that a helicopter had entered the airspace of Saraqib from the
south-east. At approximately 21:15, witnesses reported hearing a helicopter flying
above the city and the sound of two “barrels” falling and impacting in close proximity
to their location. They also indicated not hearing any explosion.
5.10 According to witness statements, two cylinders (or “barrels” according to most
witnesses) fell in an open field surrounded by building structures approximately 200
metres to the south-west of the Agricultural Bank in the eastern part of Saraqib (see
Figure 3 below), and 50 to 100 metres to the south-west of the basement mentioned in
paragraph 5.9 above.
The marks are quite clear in a satellite view on Google Earth handily taken on 6 February, just two days after the attack. The nearest crater (impact #2) is 85 meters from that building's nearest corner. The other is 135 meters away.
Militant victims passed off as civilians
Amnesty International stood up for the victims yet again to report: “Direct attacks on civilians are absolutely prohibited and are war crimes. The fact that the government feels free to flagrantly carry out such attacks using internationally banned chemical weapons reflects the complete impunity enjoyed by those who order war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria.” A rescuer described "Around eight people were barely able to breathe," and rescuers became sick. As they heard, "the casualties, all of whom were men, have since been discharged."
Now, this wouldn't make dropping toxic gas on a whole neighborhood okay, but it should be noted the men were apparently not civilians. That always seemed questionable how 8 guys were just hanging out together to encounter some poison gas, despite evertyone specifying they were civilian or just leaving that open. But there's evidence to support that hunch in the one known video to show the victims early on.
https://syrianarchive.org/en/collections/chemical-weapons/database?incident=SAR020418
Observations (hosted videos): 1 "Injured people due to targeting the town of Saraqib with chlorine" 0:55. On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it4YouSkp70
In a night-time, exterior video, a few shirtless men sit on the curb while two others in particular are treated by White Helmets. They seem to be in genuine distress, and not just from the treatment. One of these, seated on a gurney, is first seen having his jacket removed, and it's a bit green and patchy-looking to be civilian... Was he gearing up to go hunting in the mountains? No, in Syria this usually means a person is a militant. His jacket looks like it matches the one on the fighter on the left, who's helping his apparent comrade remove that evidence, tugging at its sleeve with little help.
And at least one man seated on the curb - older, also with tattoos - seems to wear tan camouflage pants similar to those of the fighter standing near him, and tucked into the boots in a similar and sort of militant manner. Otherwise, the dark pants we see, and the soggy piles of discarded clothing are harder to classify. But these points alone make the issue pretty clear to me.
The older seated man looks quite a bit like surviving civilian Fayiz Khatab, "age 46", who spoke to CNN about how his family fled recently while he stayed behind to protect the house. And so he was in a shelter with 8 other totally civilian men (9 total) … and look at these clothes! Urkle alert! How civilian can you get? This is surely the same man here on the left, and probably the extra-dazed tattooed fighter on the right, with a face that still doesn't seem to be working right.
Further clues may be in these videos featuring the victims:
SMART News: "11 civilians were suffocated" The men acting dazed in their underwear at the clinic, some interviews
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhG7elxN7B4
Sham News Network "11 injured civilians" - interviews at the hospital
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTCLrhZgYog
Orient News - "A regime helicopter targets Saraqib city with chlorine gas" - different footage of washing scene, interviews
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyxhvACJGfs
"Civil Defense Idlib" on Facebook - video shows how 12 civilians had been injured, including three members of the Civil Defense
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1563457233753327
SNHR report explains after the targeting of civilian homes with the gas barrels, "8 civilians were injured." Media activist Motea Jalal specifies "the injured were all civilians." And the report gives the names, ages, and professions (true or not) of all 11 who were injured. The names are tedious to type (at the moment) and may be fake, but the first three are all aged 20, "civil defense member at Saraqeb center" and junior ones. The other 8, aged mostly in their 20s but up to 53, are all in this line of work: "civilian." Real professionals at it too!
Furthermore one of the 8 "civilian" men who survived the gassing - apparently the oldest one, Haithan Amad Kafrtouni, age 53 - was killed just "days later" in a Syrian airstrike, according to his ostensible son Mahmoud, speaking to CNN. We're to understand that was not a strike on militants engaged in violent or terrorist acts, but on civilians stacking sacks of grain in a truck, as part of Assad's food embargo. But it seems these men were militants, and that just might play into his being involved in a staged gas attack, and his violent death shortly after that.
Obsered Symptoms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zom3EgcQgmI
In the treatment video discussed above, the two men getting special washdown seem to be in genuine distress, and not just from the treatment. One thin man is seated on the ground, heavily sprayed, and later seen doubled-over as if vomiting or trying to.
A tattooed man (I couldn't make out any of the tattoos) is seated on a gurney, and seems quite unhappy and disoriented. He has yellow stains across each cheek, as if he puked up something yellow recently. In both cases it's too hard to say if the whites of their eyes are at all reddened, but it seems like they are. By video's end both men have been walked off - unsteadily - towards (the hospital?).
OPCW FFM report gives the reported symptoms, tending to all be totally shared by all 11 patients, thought it's said 2 were worse off than the others: "Physicians described, from memory, nine ambulatory patients presenting with mild signs and symptoms of exposure, while two other patients presented with moderate signs and symptoms, displaying an altered mental state that required them to be assisted." That's probably the same ones that we see - the tattooed conductor and the thin guy. They also required extended treatment; "approximately two hours of treatment and observation before being discharged." The other nine were out the door long before that.
"5.21 ... Patients displayed nausea, eye irritation, and excessive secretions. They also presented with shortness of breath, coughing, wheezing, and crepitus during auscultation." (audible wheezing or popping in the lungs)
"5.22 ... No secondary exposure was reported."
Props to Michael Kobs for noting the visual conflict with the reports (my 'remix' of his graphic is below). This man is one of the 11, and he does not have the constricted pupils to show sarin, when it was reported for all 11. The others probably don't display it either, but there aren't many views this good. It should be noted that miosis tends to last a long time after the event - usually a couple of days, as I hear, even in moderate cases. He's in the SAMS clinic, just got the toxins washed off. His hair is still wet, yet that observed miosis has already faded? Not likely.
As noted, if this were a chlorine-sarin attack, the sarin would likely be "diminished" so it would be less effective as a weapon, or not effective at all. But there is some possible wiggle-room in the neutralization; it won't be total and instant, but will take place over some moments, and maybe some molecules of the sarin will escape totally intact. So it might be possible to have diminished symptoms instead of none, and then limited secondary contamination - if the wind blew this mixture your way. Could that also explain the lack of miosis? Possibly, but then why were medics noting miosis that wasn't there? Just to help clarify the picture for us? In the interest of truth? Not likely. More likely that's due to the lack of the right wind and/or the right chemicals.
"5.34 No chest X-rays were performed on any of the casualties." This is why "crepitus during auscultation" is mentioned instead - that's crackles audible when listening to the chest with a stethoscope. (originally I just saw "crepitus" and wondered why sarin OR chlorine would cause popping air bubbles in their joints). This probably doesn't matter, but ...
"5.36 No biomedical samples were taken." They would be hard to verify anyway, but conveniently, they didn't even have to have these guys do the token dose routine. Just have sarin turn up at the site, and have someone say "miosis" and viola - you're a sarin victim. Not that the OPCW's people were willing to fully sign on with that, but it's worked for a lot of other people, who'll be pulling the OPCW along, pressuring them to make the science agree too.
Other victim issues
SNHR report gives the "civilian" men as:
Haithan Amad Kafrtouni, age 53
Omar AbdulKarim Kafrtouni, 20
Hasan Manhal Haj Hussein, 22
Hasan Hussein al Safar, 24
Fayez Ahmad Khattab, 45
Hussein Zuhair Bakir, 32
Eyad Maher Kafrtouni, 20
Dammar Hasan Haj Hussein, 36
Somehow these 8 have relatives all over who were also the only other locals who reported a gas release: Manhal Haj Hussein, one of the residents who was exposed to the poisonous gases from the latest attack, spoke to Syrians for truth and justice: “At about 9 pm, while I was sitting and my family at home, we heard a helicopter approaching the place, and only a few minutes until we started smelling a strange smell inside the house. Then, I fainted, and then the civil defense teams arrived and took me to the hospital...” But he's not one of these 11 patients, so must have gone to a different hospital? He does specify "one of the medical points adjacent to the city." Huh. And as it happens, his apparent son, by name - Hasan Manhal Haj Hussein, age 22 - happened to be in the fateful shelter along with an apparent cousin, a son of Hasan Haj Hussein.
And yet another relative, a possible brother of Manhal, is among the very few to get on the record here: "Ali Hajj Hussein and his family" did not flee, CNN's Arwa Damon heard. "He was at home with his pregnant wife and two children when they heard helicopters overhead just after 10 p.m. They heard the sound of something falling, and then the screams began." It sounds like none of them suffered serious effects and never had to seek treatment.
So implicitly, this gas moves against its own flow (see next point) to find the only militants around (considering everyone thought it was zero) - and also flows wherever is needed to find the relatives of two of these, in two separate homes in the area? And all this while avoiding - as far as we can tell - the home or shelter of anybody else in this town? What will the OPCW and IIT's intrepid investigators find to make sense of this?
And in another oddity, Assad's attacks seek out the victims to finish off later; Mahmoud Kafratoune, age 20, told CNN's Damon "We had left the neighborhood, but my father stayed because of the house and his work." And so he "was among those affected by the chemical attack," the report continues, "only to be killed days later in the same area by another strike as he was stacking sacks of grain in a truck." The list gives Haithan Amad Kafrtouni, age 53, as the apparent father. And it lists two possible nephews of his (sons of Maher and AbdulKarim) that stayed with him and became gas victims, but did not get blown up later, as far as we know. And again, everyone is clear none of those three men nor any of the other 3-6 hanging out with them were militants who might get blown up during an effort to kill soldiers or kidnap their fellow citizens, for example. If they're gassed or blown-up, it's only while protecting their home, rescuing or helping to feed people. Obviously.
I checked VDC killed database … Only person of this name killed in the right span is Firas Kafrtouni, civilian, photo. Aside from the sacks (of food?) he's shown next to, not an evident match. Not the father of a 20-year-old man, at age 28, but from Saraqib. It says he died 13 march, 2018 "Due to his wounds sustained by the regime forces artillery shelling on the city"
No one else of that name appears in the relevant span (anytime since 4-Feb., prior to that report and to now). The best I can find is a civilian (they says) called "Abo Ziad" - from Idlib, somewhere. Died Feb. 10 from IED explosion, no details, no one blamed. That's from a list of five men from Idlib called Abu something killed that day. Turns out the rest died in clashes and such, not the same event. The other 4 "Abu" guys are all non-civilians. I bet this was one also was, and this "Abu Ziad" was one of the men who took part in that staged chemical attack.
Impacts and gas spread
Videos with site imagery - some images forthcoming:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WAcv2YIzO0
SMART news agency - footage from impact sites, especially #2 (on the slope) up close on 5 Feb. 3:16
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC4yM8oq4uU
At the scene, 5 Feb. panning across bleached grass and crater at impact 1 (in the road) 1:52
Directional impact clues? From the northwest perhaps? Or from straight above? analysis f/c...
...
The following on gas spread is just from the OPCW report's images compared to satellite views from Google Earth. Wind GUESS in the report: 4 km/h from SE, TO NW. To the northeast is needed to blow it to the basement the casualties were said to be in. But that's a worldweatheronline prediction. A better indicator might be the visible areas of bleached grass.
Feb. 6, 2018 image shows fresh impacts since last image (Aug. 9,
2017), and the one bleached area quite clearly (suggesting it is a pretty recent event, probably on the reported day). The bleached area in the north (1) is very unclear here - maybe it continued browning and dying to reveal bare earth over the next 2 days. It does seem to be the hollow, that soaked up a lot of gas.
Also, something was burned in the pit NEAR area marked purple since then - smaller hole dug there too, but unfilled? catches the light. Same appearance over following images, 5-9-18 buried over with a large mound of earth. This is just a few meters from the sort of hollow they dragged cylinder 1over to prior to sampling.
1. depression, pooled in all directions w/little spread
2. on a slope, spread largely downhill to the road
So it seems wind mattered fairly little, and topography was the main mover here. 4km/h might be right, I don't know - it's slow. Direction: In both cases but especially impact 1, The bleaching effect at the west and north parts get fuzzier - that could be wind spread, which comes along with dispersion. So the same basic northwest that was predicted (lucky break).
The side towards the basement where wheezing was allegedly induced - a sharper cutoff probably marking the contour of the hollow it filled. This shows there was hardly any flow at all towards "basement." It's possible enough would spread peripherally to smell or even be felt, depending on its strength. but not very likely, and not likely to lead to any severe exposure.
Note: this is a good image below, but there are some reports of locals besides these men saying they at least smelt the gas and/or felt some effects (more review f/c). Those stories could be true or not; that spread looks real, but screened witnesses may not be. But no one else is reported as being patients at the hospital we heard from - just the 6-8-9 men at that place perpendicular to the wind, and who were also militants. They just have a natural magnetic effect, from being so amazingly "civilian."? No there are hidden factors here - like these militant were involved in a CW false-flag operation by their militant allies that went awry, or according to plan, depending.
Since no explosion was heard, one occupant exited the basement a few minutes after
impact to assess the situation. He returned to basement and reported an odour of
chlorine. Shortly afterwards, he lost consciousness. The remaining occupants in the
basement shelter reported a pungent odour and immediately developed shortness of
breath, nausea, and a burning sensation in the eyes. Some of them reported losing
consciousness.
The implausibility of mixing sarin and chlorine
It seems the acidic properties of chlorine gas would probably attack and break don any sarin it came in contact with. Considering that chlorine-related compounds like sodium hypochlorite are used for decontamination of nerve agents like sarin. I haven't gone through all the details to be sure, so this area still deserves a better assessment, maybe by a trained chemistry expert. But here are a couple of sources that provide some of the details one could check:
* "The Chlorine-catalyzed Hydrolysis of Isopropyl Methylphosphonofluoridate (Sarin) in Aqueous Solution" Joseph EpsteinVirginia E. BauerMelvin SaxeMary M. Demek. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1956, 78, 16, 4068-4071 http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja01597a056?journalCode=jacsat&
* "As a decontaminant agent, sodium hypochlorite has been used and tested specifically to neutralize or remove traces of blister or nerve agents on skin, military equipment, or in soils" NIH.gov
Seymour Hersh mixes some erred thinking with genuine-seeming insights to claim the U.S. military "tested, in the Fifties, they tested chlorine with nerve agent to see how – whether the chlorine would supe [sic] it up. In fact what the chlorine did is it grabbed all the hydrogen molecules and diminished it. There's just no way you can use sarin and chlorine, as was written about all the time. I'm just talking about facts." https://al-bab.com/blog/2018/06/seymour-hersh-syria-theres-no-such-thing-chlorine-bomb
Of course one could mix them. The question is just what happens next - is it an effective weapon? What happens to the sarin? It will break down quicker, but there's reason to think it would also turn to different chemicals than usual - chlorinated forms of the standard breakdown products. As the WGSPM noted in a briefing note:
"If the sources quoted above are correct, the finding of chlorinated organic molecules and unchlorinated sarin breakdown products in the same samples suggests that the sarin breakdown products may have been added later. … We can find no published studies of the effect of dry chlorine on organophosphate nerve agents. If the conditions for chlorination (which include exposure to light or presence of impurities that could act as catalysts) were sufficently favourable for other organic molecules to undergo chlorination, we might expect that sarin or its breakdown products would undergo chlorination. If the sources quoted above are correct, the finding of chlorinated organic molecules and unchlorinated sarin breakdown products in the same samples suggests that the sarin breakdown products may have been added later. This casts further doubt on the integrity of the process by which these samples were provided to the Fact-Finding Mission." http://syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers/briefing-note-the-alleged-chemical-attack-in-douma-on-7-april-2018-and-other-alleged-chlorine-attacks-in-syria-since-2014
So even our best minds can only reason that there probably should be chlorinated DIMP, IMPA, etc. instead of the usual forms that appeared. But the reasoning sounds good and this question should be raised.
And we could note the FFM was apparently unable to find a way to make it all work, or they would have explained this chlorine-sarin bomb and its expected traces, and set the blame up far better than they did. Instead, upon noting sarin-related compounds, they described them vaguely as "chemicals that can neither be explained as occurring naturally in the environment nor as being related to chlorine." Even after noting that they also caused non-chlorine medical symptoms (i.e. allegedly mattered), they could only conclude "there was insufficient information and evidence to enable the FFM to draw any further conclusions on these chemicals at this stage." Maybe because they didn't make scientific sense - just yet? Apparently someone hopes the IIT can set a different stage and find a "correct" answer to this riddle.
Newborn Babies Involved?
A video on Twitter shows two tiny babies screaming on a gurney in a hospital that actually appears to be filled with thick greenish gas, although that could be a video effect. However, I don't think so. Even between the camera and the gurney it's thick enough visible shifting gas can be seen. Over the edge, it's a fog. Someone's feet five feet away are only half visible. The cameraman and the guy with the hazy feet seem to turn and walk away and leave them there. The date is 4 Feb. 2018 and the text with it translates: "#Urgent 3 cases of suffocation in Saraqib city due to targeting the city with chlorine gas Helicopters belonging to the Assad regime threw explosive barrels loaded with chlorine gas on the city of Saraqeb." Which 3 people would that be? There were the 6-8 men and here, shown, 2 tiny babies... https://twitter.com/Ali13919578/status/960291259746324481
"The Syrian regime hit Idlib countryside again with chlorine gas" comes with an image of a WH rescuer with a tiny baby in a blanket, dead external link. https://twitter.com/newsemaratyah/status/960404919776829440
Another shows a tiny baby at the very start, being wheeled out, others evacuated, apparently in connection with "Russian and Syrian forces claim the lives of dozens of civilians, including children and women, by targeting two hospitals in Maarat al-Numan, and hit chlorine gas on the city of Saraqeb" The SNHR report claimed the hospital there was targeted just prior to the chemical attack in Saraqeb. CNN's Arwa Damon also heard about hospital attacks in Maarat Numan and perhaps in Saraqeb itself … CNN report with 2 related videos attached "During that period, six medical facilities were targeted in airstrikes in Idlib province alone, including one of the key remaining hospitals that has a maternity ward. When it was bombed, teams had to evacuate staff and patients as well as premature babies, who were removed from their incubators, wrapped in blankets and sent away in ambulances in the hopes they would arrive at another medical facility before they died."
This could explain the mentioned imagery, except maybe the green gas image with Saraqeb specified and 3 cases of suffocation spoken of. This is worth a little digging. ...
Tweets Timeline
People tell me Twitter always displays the local time. Bullcrap. The times I see here are clearly hours off, I think the standard (10 hour?) diff. between my time zone and Syria's. Timeanddate.com gives a current 10 hour offset. So I add half a day (switch AM and PM), then subtract two hours for the following tweets. The one with the spooky video - https://twitter.com/Ali13919578/status/960291259746324481 - time 3:17 PM on my end = 1:17 AM on Feb 5. Again, the incident was said to be about around 9:20-9:30 PM.
* 9:44PM One person only had tweeted the exact same text about 3 suffocating, but with no video, hours earlier, at 9:44 pm. Nawras Ghazal @eg_nawras https://twitter.com/eg_nawras/status/960237607061016576. This is the earliest of all in 4 Feb. a timeline with Arabic tweets including suffocation + Saraqeb. A few repeat the 3 part in between, but mostly the record shifts like so - very quickly:
* 9:47 dropping the 3, "#Urgent Cases of suffocation..." https://twitter.com/6kdP26eXrjQ55Lj/status/960238510547619840
* 9:47 # Urgent Cases of civilian suffocation (now they're talking about the militant guys?) https://twitter.com/HalabTodayTV/status/960238521306042369
* 9:47 "9 civilians" (and that's the basic number - either an extra civilian or the WH total including themselves, also called civilian) https://twitter.com/Fr_faham/status/960238672443531264
From here the same things get repeated - no one has images, specifics or much for explanatory links. So one with an image stands out:
* 11:54 "9 cases of asphyxiation in Saraqeb city of Edlib countryside due to targeting with chlorine gas, delivered by helicopter" and about 7 or 8, maybe 9 wrapped infants are shown. Some of them look ill, injured.
https://twitter.com/alepman1/status/960240139996925953
* 12:24 Syrian Coalition tweet: "3 people suffocated with chlorine gas in Saraqeb..." https://twitter.com/SyrianCoalition/status/960247733947977735
* 12:24 More than 9 cases of suffocation among civilians https://twitter.com/alhamwi_10/status/960247692839538690
* 12:45 the Civil Defense reported 9 cases of poisoning with toxic chlorine gas in Saraqeb town (probably by now the WH tally: 6 "civilian" men and 3 of their own guys) https://twitter.com/Fouadhallak89/status/960253053466300416
* 1:55 pm an oddity: "Five civilians suffocated ..." https://twitter.com/raialyoum1/status/960270536348663809
A linked article explains in this case, the SOHR is cited - they might have their own source for at five locals - possibly even genuine - who reported to them. The fact that an usual five is cited supports this. But perhaps they got a slightly different report about the same 6-8 "civilians." "According to the Observatory, an unpleasant smell was reported after Syrian Army helicopters targeted several areas in Saraqeb city in Idlib governorate, causing five cases of suffocation among civilians."
In review No one else posted the spooky newborns video that took hours to appear ... A quick review of tweets by Ali13919578 suggests he's not usually privy to insider videos. He might well have dug it up from somewhere else (where?) and tacked it onto his retweet of an hours-old claim. But then the video might relate - maybe something he saw in other channels going with a message both he and Ghazal copied, one with the video and one without. If so, we could put that scene as earlier than the rest of the reports, before the "3 cases" switched to "cases" and then 9 "civilians." So this is inconclusive so far, not a solid lead. But the possibility remains so it might be worth more looking into.
,
--- unsorted
They headed to the rooftop of an adjacent building. On the
way upstairs, a few of them lost consciousness and others struggled to reach the roof.
They reported helping each other climb the stairs and using cloths to cover their
mouth and nose. They also reported calling for rescue via a hand-held radio.
The first team of three SCD rescuers arrived at the site. The first rescuer stepped out
of the vehicle felt a strange smell and immediately covered his nose and mouth with a
paper mask; but had difficulty breathing and lost consciousness. While en route to the
medical point, other team members reported developing similar symptoms.
two other patients
presented with moderate signs and symptoms, displaying an altered mental state that
required them to be assisted.
3 SCD, the 8 men, 11 patients total.
No chest X-rays were performed on any of the casualties.
5.35 Nine casualties were discharged within two hours of arrival, while two others needed
approximately two hours of treatment and observation before being discharged.
5.36 No biomedical samples were taken.
"crepitus during auscultation" (listening to the chest)
Some early casualty figures gave 6 men initially affected instead of 8, or gave a total of "9 cases of suffocation, including 3 injured Civil Defense Volunteers."
