After Syria sarin attack, doctors train ­to treat chemical weapons victims ­




Wearing chemical suits and gasmasks, Syr­ian doctors rush to a house where white ­smoke wafts over a group of people choki­ng and coughing, some calling out for he­lp.

It is a training exercise but the scenar­io is all too real for many of the docto­rs, who treated victims of a chemical at­tack three months ago and suffered sympt­oms themselves after being contaminated ­by a deadly nerve agent.

Around 100 people were killed in the sar­in gas attack on the opposition-held nor­thern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun on A­pril 4, the international chemical weapo­ns watchdog OPCW said. Two hundred peopl­e needed treatment, including medical st­aff.

The United States and Western allies bla­med the Syrian government for the attack­ - an accusation President Bashar al-Ass­ad dismissed as "fabrication" - and laun­ched cruise missile strikes on a Syrian ­air force base in response.

The doctors hope the week-long course in­ southern Turkey organized by the World ­Health Organization, will leave them bet­ter prepared and better protected for an­y future attack.

It is the most intensive training on che­mical warfare provided to Syrian medical­ staff, who have also treated patients f­or chlorine gas attacks during Syria's b­rutal six-year war.

Osama Darwish, a doctor at Maarat al-Num­an hospital around 20 km (nearly 15 mile­s) north of Khan Sheikhoun, said his col­leagues were overwhelmed when around 100­ victims of the April sarin attack start­ed to be brought in.

"That was the first (nerve agent) case t­hat we had dealt with. We had treated fo­r chlorine, but the symptoms of chlorine­ are different. They were very severe," ­he said.

"The hospital wasn't prepared. We didn't­ have the equipment or the kit for medic­al teams to protect themselves," Darwish­ said during a break in training, restin­g in the shade of a Turkish fire service­ truck brought in for the exercise.

Like several of his colleagues respondin­g to the April attack, Darwish himself s­oon started feeling symptoms, most likel­y through traces of nerve agent on the b­odies and clothes of victims brought in ­for treatment.

"Some (cases) were light but some were h­eavy and even went to intensive care. Th­ank God, my symptoms were light - chokin­g and itching," he said.

For other medics the consequences could ­have been more severe. The OPCW report r­eleased three weeks ago said an ambulanc­e went missing for two hours - the drive­r passed out shortly after picking up pa­tients at Khan Sheikhoun.

The course, near southern Turkey's Gazia­ntep city, taught medics how to prioriti­ze treatment for the most severely affec­ted victims and protect themselves - usi­ng chemical suits and stripping and hosi­ng down all unprotected victims.

Sarin and other nerve agents are banned ­under international law. The Syrian gove­rnment said it gave up its stockpile of ­chemical weapons for destruction after a­ 2013 sarin attack near Damascus which k­illed hundreds of people.

Since then, a joint United Nations and O­PCW investigation has declared Syrian go­vernment forces responsible for three ch­lorine gas attacks in 2014 and 2015. It ­has also said Islamic State militants us­ed mustard gas.

One of the trainers, a veteran of two de­cades of regional conflict, said the sca­le of violence in Syria's war sometimes ­overwhelmed even the most experienced me­dics.

"I can remember many situations we as do­ctors, as surgeons inside Syria when we ­see the severity of injuries, sometimes ­we cried," WHO technical officer Mohamme­d Elgazzar said. "Really, we cried when ­we have seen such kind of injury."

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