Wind and rockets key clues in Syrian chemical puzzle
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Who was responsible for launching the attack is another matter. The short-range rockets used to deliver it might provide clues. The inspectors will try to find and sample these, says Richard Guthrie, a chemical weapons specialist formerly with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in Sweden. They cannot address who launched them as this isn't in their mandate, but if you have a rocket with a 2-kilometre range, and you know where it landed, you can estimate where it came from, says Guthrie.
There are already some clues. He notes that the day of the attack was the one day that week when the wind blew from government-held central Damascus towards the rebel-held eastern suburbs. That and the apparent lack of army casualties suggest government involvement.
So can the West take any action to prevent more attacks? The US has in the past bombed chemical weapons stockpiles, and US destroyers are in range. But a low-intensity explosion, Guthrie says, will release chemicals, and some stockpiles could well be in populated areas. A high-energy blast still won't incinerate all the chemicals but it will lift any intact agents high up where they can spread hundreds of kilometres. Both types of strike are likely to kill people in the vicinity.
A study published last December shows that the bombing of Iraq's extensive chemical weapons plants early in the Gulf War in 1991 released sarin over military encampments 600 kilometres away, at doses Robert Haley of the University of Texas in Dallas says caused characteristic Gulf War illnesses and brain damage. Soldiers who were exposed were four times as likely to have symptoms as those who weren't.
With thousands, if not millions, of people within a few hundred kilometres of Syrian weapons sites, bombing them is an option foreign governments must weigh carefully.
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