Chemical security

Russian military calls on UN chemical weapons watchdog to send experts to Aleppo

The Russian Defense Ministry has addressed the UN body devoted to monitoring the use of chemical weapons, asking it to send a mission to Aleppo, Syria, following a reported chemical attack by militants in the area.

“[We] ask the OPCW [the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons] governing body to consider sending [its] experts to Aleppo’s ‘1070’ area as soon as possible on a mission to establish the facts of the use of chemical agents as weapons,” the Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov, told journalists at a news briefing.

He added that data analysis of the soil samples and chemical shell fragments found by Russian experts in Aleppo would be handed over to the OPCW according to established procedure.