MOSCOW, September 5 (RIA Novosti) - A round of ammunition used near the largest Syrian city of Aleppo in a purported chemical weapons attack in March was not a factory-made item of the Syrian armed forces, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.
The ministry was guided by the conclusions of Russian experts who investigated the March 19 incident in Syria that reportedly left 26 civilians and soldiers dead and another 86 people injured.
“The used round of ammunition was a homemade item on the basis of rockets made in Syria’s north by the so-called Bashair Al-Nasr brigade,” the ministry said in a statement.
The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted Wednesday to give President Barack Obama the authority to use military force against the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack last month.
A US intelligence report claims that the Assad regime was behind a chemical weapons attack near Damascus on August 21 that Washington says left more than 1,400 people dead.
The UN Security Council has so far not authorized any military intervention in the Syrian crisis. Russia has urged all parties to the conflict to use diplomatic means to resolve it.
