President Bashar al-Assad announced that Syria has neither chemical weapons nor facilities to manufacture them.
Assad said in an interview with Indian WION news channel that behind the chemical attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun on April 4 were “the United States and the Western intelligence with the terrorists. They staged this play just to have a pretext to attack Syria, and that’s what happened a few days later when they attacked our airport.”
“And they wanted to demonize again, to re-demonize the Syrian state and the Syrian President. So, this is the only headline that could capture the audience and the public opinion around the world,” he added.
Over 80 people died in the April 4 purported gas attack on Khan Sheikhoun, which the Western countries blamed on the Damascus government.
Using the incident as a pretext, US warships fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea at the Shayrat airfield in Homs province on April 7. US officials claimed that the suspected Khan Sheikhoun gas attack had been launched from the military site.
The Syrian government has fiercely denied using or even possessing chemical weapons since the country’s compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention was certified by international observers in 2013.