syria-un-20160826 68

S/2016/738 68/98 16-14788 Annex VII Qmenas, 16 March 2015 Findings of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission in the Syrian Arab Republic 1. The Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) report (S/2015/908, page 84, paragraph 3.8) refers to an incident on the night of 16 March 2015 between 2000 and 2100 hours: “… the occupants of the houses situated in the eastern and north-eastern part of the village, relatively close to the impact point, smelled an odour similar to chlorine-based household cleaning agents, but much more intense.” (S/2015/908, page 84, paragraph 3.9) 2. “From the 60 or so individuals who arrived from Qmenas to the Sarmin field hospital on 16 March 2015, 40 cases had clinical signs of anxiety, six cases were considered as secondary exposure (one treating physician and five first responders), and 14 patients were considered as directly exposed.” (S/2015/908, page 84, paragraph 3.12) 3. “In itself, no one source of information or evidence would lend particularly strong weighting as to whether there was an event that had used a toxic chemical as a weapon. However, taken in their entirety, sufficient facts were collected to conclude that incidents in the Syrian Arab Republic likely involved the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon. There is insufficient evidence to come to any firm conclusions as to the identification of the chemical, although there are factors indicating that the chemical probably contained the element chlorine.” (S/2015/908, page 151, paragraph 5.19) The Mechanism’s investigation Background 4. Qmenas (Idlib Govenorate, Idlib District) is located 6 km south-east of Idlib city. Sarmin is less than 5 km to the northeast and Saraqib 12 km to the east, the latter located at the junction of the M5 Damascus-Aleppo and M4 Latakia motorways. The airfield of Taftanaz is approximately 13 km linear distance in the north-east. 5. In the 2004 census, the village of Qmenas had about 2,700 inhabitants. In August 2014, a report from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recorded high numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Idlib District. Some sources report that Qmenas still had a large population, as many people from Idlib city had been displaced there and often stayed with relatives, while other sources state that the village had been depopulated due to the proximity to the frontline. 6. In 2014, Government presence in Idlib had consisted of networks of checkpoints and military installations: one running along the M5 between Ma’arrat al-Numan and Khan Sheikhoun, and the other along the M4 connecting Latakia to Idlib city