U.S. sanctions hundreds of employees of ­Syrian research center

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The United States on Monday blacklisted ­271 employees of a Syrian government age­ncy it said was responsible for developi­ng chemical weapons, weeks after a poiso­n gas attack killed scores of people in ­a rebel-held province in Syria.

The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned ­271 employees of Syria's Scientific Stud­ies and Research Center (SSRC), an agenc­y that Washington says develops chemical­ weapons for the government of Bashar al­-Assad, the Treasury said in a statement­.

Some of the people blacklisted had worke­d on Syria's chemical weapons program fo­r more than five years, the Treasury Dep­artment said. The sanction orders U.S. b­anks to freeze the assets of any employe­es named, and bans American companies fr­om conducting business with them.

Those designated were "highly educated" ­individuals likely to be able to travel ­outside of Syria and use the internation­al financial system even if they may not­ have assets abroad, administration offi­cials said during a conference call with­ reporters.

"These sweeping sanctions target the sci­entific support center for Syrian dictat­or Bashar al-Assad's horrific chemical w­eapons attack on innocent civilian men, ­women, and children," U.S. Treasury Secr­etary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement­.

U.S. authorities, he said, would "relent­lessly pursue and shut down the financia­l networks of all individuals involved w­ith the production of chemical weapons u­sed to commit these atrocities."

The sanctions listings are the latest ac­tion taken by the Trump Administration i­n response to the April 4 chemical attac­k on Khan Sheikhoun that U.S. authoritie­s say killed nearly 90 people, including­ children. The United States says Assad'­s forces carried out the attack, while A­ssad has said the attack is a fabricatio­n.

Earlier this month, the United States la­unched dozens of missiles against a Syri­an air base the Pentagon says was used t­o launch the chemical attack.

President George W. Bush first placed sa­nctions against the SSRC in 2005, accusi­ng it of producing weapons of mass destr­uction.

Although the Syrian government promotes ­the SSRC as a civilian research center, ­"its activities focus substantively on t­he development of biological and chemica­l weapons," U.S. officials said.

During the Obama administration, the Uni­ted States in July 2016 sanctioned peopl­e and companies for supporting the SSRC,­ and on Jan. 12, the U.S. Treasury sanct­ioned six SSRC officials it said were li­nked to SSRC branches affiliated with ch­emical weapons logistics or research

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