Sneaking in Sarin Allegations: 24 March, 2017

Re-Considering the IIT's Nine Unsolved CW Cases
Nov, 16, 2019
Extremely rough ...
edits to... Nov 27

A post in progress to sort out some neglected-by-me details of the intertwined chemical attacks alleged in Latamnah, Hama on 24 and 25 March, 2017.

March 25 appeared as the first chemical attack of the year, coming as a chlorine attack as in recent years, not the red-line-crossing and war-threatening nerve agent sarin. That was not even expected to resurface after Assad seemingly gave up on it in 2013 and stuck to killing with chlorine since then. So 25 March was no huge news in that regard, but a good introduction as it killed a doctor and two others.

Within a week or so we heard of another attack in Latamnah involving sarin (30 March), and then the famous attack in nearby Khan Sheikhoun on 4 April, with both chlorine and sarin first reported, sarin confirmed, and thought related to the 80+ civilian fatalities, and so used to justify U.S.-led missile strikes on Syria.

For a while the only other attack that year seemed to be on 22 March or earlier, by Islamist forces as they overran several towns near Hama, including Khattab; their occupation videos from there feature an un-noted chlorine cylinder, laying just outside the gates of what seems to be the abandoned city hall. It appears distorted as if recently deployed as a weapon - like, by the Islamists as part of their takeover - but not fired especially high to try and mimic a helicopter drop. This probably shows their regular tactical use of the weapon as opposed to their use of it in the propaganda war.

Anyway, yeah .. the chlorine-sarin confusion thing in 2017. These alleged events at the start seem to be at the crux of it.

This post had included a review of the 25 March incident it's intertwined with. But this was too wieldy and got moved here for my second and far better post on that alleged attack. What stays is just what's needed from 25 March, aside from its sarin findings, to explain this late-appearing allegation.

A Decried Attack on 25 March
OPCW FFM report S/1636/2018, 13 July 2018 https://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/S_series/2018/en/s-1636-2018_e_.pdf
1.9 The alleged incident of 25 March was widely reported in the media as targeting an area where an operating field hospital was located and in which one “barrel” cylinder fell inside the main entrance hall of the hospital and a doctor lost his life.
1.10 The FFM determined that chlorine was released from cylinders through mechanical impact. The FFM concluded that chlorine was very likely used as a chemical weapon at Ltamenah Hospital and the surrounding area on 25 March 2017.

4 chlorine cylinders, everyone escapes except the Dr. Ali Darwish, the patient he was performing surgery on, and somehow one "first responder." One or two medical assistants were badly affected but lived.
Questionable story given the injury was probably not life-threatening, and even if it was and was that urgent, the medicas dying along with him doesn't help. It's possible the trained medical professionals did all agree to this fateful course of action, but it seems far more possible that this story was simply invented to replace a true story someone didn't want us knowing.

A Secret (?) Attack on 24 March
March 25: Shajul Islam seems to claim the attack this day (penetrating the cave hospital in Latamnah) was by chlorine, and by sarin, in the same tweet (in the video, he reported chlorine like most did, but the text claims sarin - via Qoppa999 shortcut). Then on the 26th he claimed "I am so unwell now. Not sure what it is. I have been treating so many patients from chemical attacks this week without any sort of protection for myself or others around me. We just don't have any." We knew of two chlorine attacks by this point, one of them on this day, and no sarin ones. Chlorine causes no secondary exposure, which he seems to be hinting at. He's more explicit with this Facebook post and video of the same day: "URGENT! We are getting so many patients with gas poisoning. This attack is from Al Lataminah in Northern Hama. This seems very toxic and has killed a doctor ( Ali Darwish) who was treating the patients. We have seen chlorine gas attacks, but this is not the same. The patients are dying very fast. We now strongly suspect its Sarin Gas. CAN YOU HELP US." (ACLOS)

That might have been some kind of a strangely limited hint of an event that no one explicitly reported at the time - the actual first CW attack of the year (that would be blamed on Assad), and it revived the long-dormant sarin weapon! A week earlier than we otherwise heard. How on earth do you forget to mention that, even after the chlorine attack you DO report the next day, and the second sarin attack a week later, and the big deadly sarin attack nearby two weeks later? The terrorist-linked Shajul Islam MIGHT hint at it, and no one else even does that? It's like a made-up event, but perhaps made up early, and either kept quiet or just not agreed on at the time...

Only in mid-June of 2018, over a year later, did any explicit and public word surface of an even earlier incident in Latamnah. On 13 June, an OPCW report got to make news by announcing that chlorine was confirmed in the 25 March incident we knew about, and sarin was used in an attack the day before even "Dr. Islam" didn't seem to hear about at the time. "OPCW Confirms Use of Sarin and Chlorine in Ltamenah, Syria, on 24 and 25 March 2017." The report explaining it is S/1636/2018 - direct PDF link: https://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/S_series/2018/en/s-1636-2018_e_.pdf

Bellingcat's Eliot Higgins agrees no one heard of it at the time or before the 2018 report: "Unlike the March 25th 2017 chlorine attack, the Sarin attack on March 24th in Al-Lataminah went unnoticed, so the OPCW FFM report is the first information we have about that attack." (https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2018/06/13/opcw-fact-finding-mission-confirms-sarin-chlorine-use-syria/) He takes no issue with this fact - it must be, you know, fog of war and stuff. And no one died. But then no one died on the 30th, and they reported THAT - second try at a pre-Khan Sheikhoun sarin prelude? Was there a problem with the first try? If so, can we deduce what it might be?

As reported, it was a 5:45 am jet attack, firing a non-chlorine CW weapon, then a conventional explosive, hitting the same basic farmland south of town hit in later attacks. There were no fatalities or serious poisonings mentioned, but "up to 30 casualties" in two groups: First was people from "two families who were sleeping in caves in the southern residential area of Ltamenah" - the kind of strange thing people allegedly do in this wartime situation - and then "several men located in the agricultural land outside the city, close to the first impact point." Early-rising farmers? Fighters sleeping in their cave compound there? It is noted the area was "arable farmland where armed groups were stationed. A small number of agricultural workers were also present in the area at the time," and the ones affected are … "several men" (higher than "a small number"?)

Symptoms reported were most consistent with nerve agent exposure, but somewhat vague. S/1636, point 5.22 "All casualties are reported to have presented with shortness of breath, miosis, cough, oral hypersecretion, and perceived agitation. There were no reported skin, pulmonary, or vital sign abnormalities. All cases are described as being mild presentations and patients were discharged within 24 hours." Also, "one member of the medical treating staff who was interviewed also reported secondary contamination."
Witnesses describe no smell at the crater, and close inspection led to itching but no death. Inside they say was a strange substance: seen up-close, it was first a bubbling, water-like liquid, and days later reported as black but still bubbling.
http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Alleged_Chemical_Attacks,_March_25-April_3,_2017#March_24.2C_Latamnah

Alleged impact area, in relation to those reported with the sarin attack a week later:

Can we see a possible strategy here? That significance and more was duly noted by Higgins at Bellingcat:

This location is particularly interesting as it is just to the west of an opposition tunnel system previously identified through open sources after the Russian Ministry of Defence posted videos of airstrikes on the location in 2015. In each of the three videos, the Russian MoD falsely claimed that ISIS was being bombed when ISIS was not in the area at the time, and in one case, wrongly claimed the location was in Raqqa ...

This site is just north of the site hit during the March 30th 2017 Sarin attack 6 days later, and also documented in the OPCW FFM’s earlier report on the March 30th attack. It appears likely that the March 30th Sarin attack was another attempt to attack the tunnel complex targeted on March 24th, as no other obvious targets are in the area ... 

... It seems clear the OPCW FFM is trying to draw a connection between the Sarin used in all three attacks, Sarin they would know has been linked to the Syrian government, even if they don’t state it explicitly. It should be kept in mind the OPCW FFM is not tasked with assigning blame for chemical attacks in Syria, so they would not be expected to explicitly state such a connection, so this appears to be as close as the OPCW FFM can come to blaming the Syrian government for those three attacks.

They often lean as far as possible in that direction, never the other way. And it's often based on faulty evidence or readings. Munition fragments said to be recovered, but never shown - possible M-4000 remnants waiting in the wings? ...

Higgins tweeted that this "rather undermines the narrative of CW Truthers … why do a false flag, with Sarin, if you don't tell anyone?" (new answer Nov. 23, and short form tweeted w/visual aid) Here's a better question: why would they have it happen for real but not mention it, and even imply it didn't happen? Because the issue people raise is NOT that they staged a silent false-flag but that NOTHING happened or was even made-up AT THAT TIME. Only later did someone decide it would be useful if they HAD said that, but lacking a time machine ... they had to make it up then, probably about the same time OPCW came asking why there were sarin traces in the samples from the 25 March chlorine attack. After this prior incident became a known thing, they could explain it was from people washing off there the day before.

Sarin traces after 10 months
24 March - samples 5.33 Based on information supplied during interviews, including witness testimony and supporting media files, the FFM identified potentially relevant munition parts and arranged for their collection by an NGO. As a result further environmental samples, including remnants of alleged munition parts, were received by the FFM team on 19 February 2018." When these were gathered is less clear - implicitly following interviews in mid-2017, with a strangely long delay somewhere so the samples were only received about ten months after the alleged incident. Testing date unclear except it's noted - unusually - that considering other high-stakes investigations, they "were not analysed immediately"

With the incidents on 3-24, 3-30, and 4-4, OPCW brags about the matching chemicals - about a dozen sarin-related ones in each case, including:
active Sarin, DIMP, Hexamine, Pyro, IMPA, DIPP, DIPF, HFP, EIMP, IPMPA, TPP, MPA, TEA*, iPPF, DBP - regardless of when they were taken - a few days to 313 days. Clearly this raises the likelihood the 24 March samples were exposed to sarin far later than it's claimed - like a few weeks prior to the belated handover.

* (TEA = Triethanolamine, perhaps the wrong acronym - Wikipedia says "abbr. as TEOA or TELA to distinguish it from TEA which is for triethylamine") - no clear link to sarin, but Another source … Triethanolamine is used for making some CWs - "nitrogen mustards" at least - perhaps also in this method of producing sarin. OPCW lists it as a precursor under schedule 3. It has a bunch of random industrial uses and little danger of its own.)

Sarin traces after a chlorine attack
For the 25 March incident, "The FFM received environmental samples and metal objects on 10 and 12 April 2017" and just one further listed item on 19 February 2018 ("Wooden piece from the bottom rail of the Operation Room door in Latamneh hospital" - dates are built into the "evidence no."). So we have samples primarily from 16-18 days after the event at the latest, perhaps gathered right afterwards. The time of testing is unclear. Two labs were called on, apparently focused on different chemicals and using different methods. They both turned up some TNT residue, and various chlorinated compounds.

It wasn't a sarin attack, so it's unsurprising no active sarin turned up. But it might have been surprising when the results came back from this chlorine attack and sarin degradation products turned up widely. DIMP - and that one alone - turned up in soil, water, and mud next to cylinder 1 (inside the hospital) and by cylinder 2, which landed 50 meters away to the northwest. Soil next to the 1st barrel DIMP in a "2,2,2" form. DIMP was also found on Dr. Darwish's clothes, a blanket and surgical tools from the OR, and on first responder clothing including a White Helmets jacket. 50-150m from the hospital, some DIMP items also contained Isopropyl methylphosphonate (IPMPA). No other degradation products come up, except perhaps Triethanolamine - possible precursor, therefore ingredient and by-product. In the
samples from 24 March, this product appeared in 2 spots: on someone's shirt (05SDS), and on Dr. Darwish's shirt (02SDS), and nowhere else.

At cylinder 2 - said to land 50 meters northwest of the hospital, the area (not the cylinder) tested for DIMP, perhaps more strongly than anywhere else - lab 2 finds DIMP everywhere, lab 1 only with mud and water next to cylinder 2 (or in the table "2nd barrel") plus Soil 50m away from it (in what direction?), paper and concrete 50 m from 1st impact (in what direction?) and on "Surgical tools from the operation room." 12 other samples have DIMP found by lab 2 and not lab 1, so the few where they both see it probably have higher levels of the stuff.

Maybe a smaller amounts break down more quickly so the first product (IMPA, as the cited OPCW report says) has vanished, making way for mainly DIMP, IPMPA (which is the second step, and a later one? and where shirts are involved, maybe leaving a precursor.? Small amounts would seem good, given that ZERO sarin release was mentioned (past a debatable mumble) at the time and over the next year.

And therefore a 24 March attack?
Discussing the 25 March chlorine attack, S/1636 states:
"6.6 Also, with respect to the same alleged incident, analysis results from samples showed the presence of elevated levels of chloride. The FFM further notes the presence of chemicals that may be related to sarin. In the absence of information to the contrary, the FFM does not attribute the presence of these chemicals to this alleged incident, but instead determines their presence as being related to the very likely use of sarin the day before, and the decontamination of patients at this location."
And that incident became a known thing when? It was never reported anywhere at the time or over the following weeks or months...

"4.9 The FFM held its first interview on 10 April 2017, concerning an alleged incident in the area of Ltamenah on 25 March 2017. Throughout the interviews, including those relating to Ltamenah on 30 March 2017 and Khan Shaykhun on 4 April 2017, additional allegations were raised by the interviewees. These included allegations of an incident on 24 March (in Ltamenah, Khattab, and Qomhane) ..." First - 3 incidents in a day? And one is in Khattab? See above on the attack there's evidence for, predating the 24th by at least a day … did they claim the same cylinder, or something else? I'd like to see the details on that someday. Qomhane, no information … Anyway, 24 April was of interest. It came up somewhere in the span of interviews, perhaps as early as the first ones, or maybe later. So the first word to anyone of an attack that day, that would be claimed to involve sarin, came - at the earliest - right along with the samples that would show those otherwise troubling sarin traces. Otherwise, it came later yet, and not before those traces were set to become known. And this discovery of an unknown sarin attack led, as the OPCW report relates, to a search for supporting evidence:

"5.33 Based on information supplied during interviews, including witness testimony and supporting media files, the FFM identified potentially relevant munition parts and arranged for their collection by an NGO. As a result further environmental samples, including remnants of alleged munition parts, were received by the FFM team on 19 February 2018."

The cited "media" means there was video or photos, but they were not published anywhere that anyone has found.

5.12: "Witnesses estimated up to 30 casualties, including women, men, and children." But in 5.20 it says "At approximately 06:00, casualties began arriving from a residential area in Ltamenah via civilian vehicles. The physician reported treating 16 civilians at the hospital. No hospital admission or treatment records were available at the time of the interviews and details such as age distribution and gender were not available." The tables with details refer to 16, so probably the same referred to here, with the other half of about 30 not having enough symptoms to bother with. Or - as noted above - 15 casualties were hospital staff, of 33 total: the would mean just 18 outside patients: the first 16 and then 2 more in the second batch? All 16 cases were considered mild, and everyone was released within 24 hours.

Astute reader Andrew had already noted, initially in this comment at Tim Hayward's blog, the odd similarities with the victims on 24 March and 30 March, as reported. Table number 6 in each of two reports happens to be where the details are: 16 'mild' cases on 24 March vs. 10 'moderate' 6 'severe' and no mild on the 30th, per report S/1548-2017 (direct PDF link). This plus the difference in breathing issues (dyspnea, cough with 16 vs. 0) suggesting these are two different groups, but otherwise it says each attack produced a set of exactly 16 agitated, drooling sarin patients with pinpoint pupils who both lacked other symptoms, and varied just in effects on the airway.

However sarin causes a paralysis sort of dyspnea, and fluid-edema that can be fatal, and the impurities in the kind used in Syria are caustic (besides yellow and having a strange, decay-like smell), known to cause irritation of the eyes and the airways, coughing etc. It's similar to chlorine, and that should appear in both cases. At 0:55 in this video, a doctor explains how 30 March patients suffered from "breathing problems, cough, (bronchial) secretions, eye irritation" besides the described neurological symptoms including "odd behavior." (sarin tends to paralyze, causing NO behavior, FWIW). So that was in there too, but then you might drop it if you didn't want the two sets to look like the one recycled set it was... you might drop those symptoms from 16 right to zero, and arbitrarily upgrade all 16 mild cases - if you really wanted it to look different. (of course, inventing a whole different set would be smarter, but maybe that proved too tricky - I don't know the details of what they need to report to convince the investigators.)

The records for 24 March to prove it's a distinct event with its own patients - somehow destroyed (?) by the chlorine cylinder's impact the following day. Were they etched is sand right the impact point? 5.31 "The FFM requested hospital documentation from medical staff. However, due to damage sustained to the medical facility on 25 March 2017, it was not possible to provide these records and documentation. This would have allowed cross-checking and corroboration of information gathered from witness statements during interviews."

Strange then: Doctor Abdullah a-Darweesh, the director of the Hama Health Directorate, said following the attack on the 25th "The hospital is currently out of service, “not because it has been physically damaged,” said Darweesh, “but because the medical staff has been injured.” The records for the 24th were also injured? Melted in the gas amid the non-damage and lack of fires? http://syriadirect.org/news/surgeon-killed-dozens-injured-in-suspected-north-hama-%E2%80%98chlorine-gas%E2%80%99-attack/
Still no lacrymation (excessive tears) mentioned - it was mentioned for the 25th with just chlorine, and it's on the table there for 30 March with zero cases - but that's the L in sarin's known "SLUDGE syndrome," one of the most common indicators, here present in 0 of 16 - or 0 out of 32 - reported cases. They got the S (salivation), but none of the others. Other common signs lacking in mention: Headache is reported along with dizziness for 24 March, not for the 30th. Vision problems (blurred or darkened) are mentioned in neither case. The common weakness/fatigue/paralysis, nausea/vomiting, and others like profuse sweating also fail to come up at all.

All that could mean, in one or both cases:
- anomalous sarin exposure, or
- real exposure to something similar in effect but different, or
- a badly-researched set of fake symptoms to suggest sarin.

Human Rights Watch quotes a doctor from the same hospital that supposedly treated the victims on March 24. In their report they quote a Dr. Mahmoud al-Mohamad about March 30:
“we didn’t know what it was”
https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/05/01/death-chemicals/syrian-governments-widespread-and-systematic-use-chemical-weapons
Idlib Health Directorate video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huhn-4Zbe1c&feature=youtu.be&t=227
Two doctors and a patient agree chlorine cases were known recently, but whatever they saw on the 30th was different and new. "These cases are new and problematic to us" a week after they allegedly handled just such an attack. The one doctor is Dr. Mohamed - perhaps the same cited by HRW and others as the hospital's director. The other says the chlorine caused more neurological effects, while this sarin just makes people cough mostly, but it's kinda the same and kinda different (really that confused, or did he just misspeak?)... A local in there as a patient agrees it was the first time they had been “attacked with poisonous gases by this type of warplanes,” as opposed to the usual chlorine, and usually by helicopter. Note 5.9 “the sound of a plane” cited with 24 March launch of sarin bomb (props to Andrew)

Some standing questions 
1) Why did no one clearly report an apparent sarin attack with so much evidence behind it, at that time or through intensive reporting on follow-on attacks over the next two weeks? Can that really be oversight in so many cases? Why would there be a hush order about it? What else but it not quite existing could explain the general silence? And why of all people was terrorist-linked "Dr." Shajul Islam the only one to break that general pattern with his strangely prophetic non-sequiturs?

2) Did active sarin dispersed on 24 March really come up in a soil sample, in tests run "not immediately" after Feb. 19, 2018? And while active sarin was gone from a fragment of metal, did that  really have so many byproducts, including the first one, IMPA, some ten months or more after the fact?

3) Was Dr. Darwish wearing the same, unwashed scrubs from the 24th when he died on the 25th? Allegedly, cross-contamination from helping people silently on the 24th came up after he died the next day following a chlorine attack and had his shirt from that day handed over as evidence. It reportedly had readable traces - DIMP and the strange "TEA" - still on it.

4) OK, fabric is porous, maybe traces remained after a washing, but … were they using the same unwashed surgical tools from the day before? Those are usually made of surgical steel, should rarely get scratched or porous to any degree, and professionals usually steam sanitize them every night. They are not a place you expect to find residues from earlier in the week. But some of these too turned up DIMP after the 25th, in fact strongly enough even lab 1 picked up on it.

5) Why was DIMP found 50 meters from the hospital if it only got there secondarily by patients? 50 meters not being that far, were people in the silent sarin attack washed off just where cylinder 2 would land the next day, so as to have water and mud next to it tested for DIMP, perhaps more strongly than anywhere else? Was that a coincidence, an effort to send some message, or to erase the sarin signs? Is this the same spot the hospital director claims a regular explosive bomb impacted instead? All answers to this line of questioning are strange.

6) and past is even likely, once I solicit some other thoughts, etc.

Related Issues
Hasna's story (copied over, to be re-written)
Monitor Mahmoud Hasna might have helped sneak in this 24 March sarin attack - it seemed then he was conflating the incidents of 25 and 30 March, but maybe it's 30, 25, AND 24 March?
http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/2017/09/monitor-mahmoud-unravels-quds1-sarin.html

"one of the warplanes that took off this morning" (fidgets with a knob on a device) "is the same as the one that carried out an attack about a week ago on a hospital in the northern Hama countryside, killing a doctor and causing many injuries. It was the same warplane. So I thought that the plane might be carrying chemical substances. We started sending out notifications, assuming the planes were headed to attack the front lines."
As for his prior mission ... Al-Hasna sems to conflate two preceding attacks - March 25, on a cave hospital in Latamnah vs. March 30 in the same town. These will be considered in a little detail below, as they tie in with the Khan Sheikhoun attack to interesting effect. He also might be conflating jets: the SNHR heard the same confusion of attacks, but also explains:
"Mahmoud told us that he was surprised by the warplanes that took off from al Shayrat Air-base  at  such  an  early  time,  considering  that  he  monitored  the  warplane  with  the  symbol  Quds-6 taking off at a similar time before in late-March and targeting a hospital in Hama  suburbs with poison gases at that time."
SNHR report: "[Al-Hasna] monitored  the  warplane  with  the  symbol  Quds-6 taking off at a similar time before in late-March and targeting a hospital in Hama suburbs with poison gases at that time." That's a similar time to the 6:26 takeoff on April 4. A jet at dawn means this attack, not the hospital one, done in the afternoon with a helicopter.
he put 3-25's victims with 3-30's attack details for a single fictional event "about a week ago." Or at least, that's the fairest presumption.
It's not encouraging that he should be this vague about events so central to his important hunch. Does he know these local and recent events, or not?