{"id":70252,"date":"2013-05-06T20:35:59","date_gmt":"2013-05-06T17:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=70252"},"modified":"2023-07-26T11:43:59","modified_gmt":"2023-07-26T08:43:59","slug":"turkish-doctors-say-no-nerve-gas-in-syrian-victims-blood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/05\/06\/turkish-doctors-say-no-nerve-gas-in-syrian-victims-blood\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkish doctors say no nerve gas in Syrian victims’ blood"},"content":{"rendered":"

REYHANLI,\u00a0Turkey\u00a0\u2014 Doctors in Turkey say initial tests of blood samples from victims of a suspected chemical weapons attack in\u00a0Syria\u00a0last month are negative for sarin gas.<\/p>\n

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A Syrian boy holds an AK-47 assault rifle in the majority-Kurdish Sheikh Maqsud district of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. US intelligence agencies determined with “some degree of varying confidence” that chemical weapons have been used in Syria as of April 25, 2013. (DIMITAR DILKOFF\/AFP\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Medics tested the blood samples \u2014 which were taken from some 13 victims of an attack that included white powder in the northern village of Saraqeb on April 29 \u2014 at the Reyhanli hospital on the same day, but did not find anything unusual, they said.<\/p>\n

They tested the blood specifically for sarin gas \u2014 a nerve agent \u2014 and also ran regular bloodwork.<\/p>\n

The samples from the victims, who suffered from dizziness, vomiting and respiratory difficulties, have since been sent to the Turkish capital, Ankara, for further testing.<\/p>\n

The development comes as\u00a0Israeli\u00a0fighter jets are reported to have carried out at least several airstrikes on weapons convoys near Damascus over the weekend.<\/p>\n

Employees at the Istanbul headquarters of the Council of Forensic Medicine, the institute testing the blood in Ankara, were unable to answer GlobalPost inquiries on the status of the additional tests.<\/p>\n

Doctors in Reyhanli, in Turkey\u2019s Hatay province, say they believe the Turkish government will keep the final results a secret due to the potential global political consequences of either negative or positive results.<\/p>\n

US President Barack Obama had previously said chemical weapons use in the now two-year-long civil war would be a \u201cred line\u201d, and potentially provoke a US-led intervention against the government forces of Syrian president Bashar al Assad.<\/p>\n

Both Israeli and US officials have in recent weeks said they believe that chemical weapons, including sarin gas, have been used in the fighting in Syria but it is unclear in what capacity and from where the chemicals originated.<\/p>\n

More from GlobalPost:\u00a0Syria:\u00a0The horrific chemical weapons attack that probably wasn\u2019t a chemical weapons attack (Graphic video)<\/strong><\/p>\n

But while some Syrians say chemical weapons have been used on civilian neighborhoods in several locations throughout the country, they remain difficult to identify.<\/p>\n

“The symptoms were consistent with those caused by a chemical, and the effects of this chemical were very serious and potentially fatal,\u201d said Dr. Ubada Alabrash, who treated the victims at Reyhanli hospital. \u201cBut we couldn\u2019t identify what the chemical was.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Saraqeb and in an earlier attack on April 13 where white powder was dispersed in a Kurdish suburb of Aleppo, the civilian victims were displaying similar symptoms: dizziness, vomiting, headaches and breathing problems.<\/p>\n

Also, based on photos and videos uploaded to YouTube \u2014 and catalogued by independent blogger and weapons monitor, Eliot Higgins \u2014 the spent munitions or canisters witnesses said disseminated the chemicals appeared to be virtually identical.<\/p>\n

More from GlobalPost:\u00a0Complete Coverage from Inside Syria<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt appears to be a very strong match to the remnants of devices that were supposedly used in an earlier attack in Sheikh Maghsoud, Aleppo,\u201d Higgins writes of the canisters left behind in Saraqeb on his blog,\u00a0\u201cBrown Moses.\u201d\u00a0His work tracking and identifying weapons used in the Syrian conflict is cited widely by both rights groups and international media.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis leads me to believe the same devices and chemical were used in both attacks,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n

However, both weapons and medical experts are urging caution.<\/p>\n

While the same agent could have been used in both attacks, it could have been tear gas or some other kind of generated smoke, normally used for riot control, some weapons experts said.<\/p>\n

The telltale sign of a sarin gas attack is myosis, or constricting of the pupils, and fasciculations, the medical term for tremors. While GlobalPost confirmed that some of the victims in the April 13 attack suffered from tremors, it was unable to confirm any of them had myosis.<\/p>\n

More from GlobalPost:\u00a0UN clarifies statement, says ‘no conclusive findings’ on chemical weapons in Syria<\/strong><\/p>\n

While three people were killed in the attack in Aleppo and another person died from the attack on Saraqeb, the majority of victims recovered after just several days.<\/p>\n

In Aleppo, the doctors who treated the patients also later suffered similar symptoms to the victims. In Reyahanli, the medics reportedly wore protective suits.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy effects were mild, but one doctor had to be admitted to the ICU,\u201d said Dr. Kawa Hassan of the Avreen Hospital that admitted the 22 victims of the attack in Aleppo.<\/p>\n

When the patients began to arrive on April 13, Dr. Hassan said he was scared not only for himself but for the entire country.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he begins a chemical war, he will kill us all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Tracey Shelton reported from Aleppo and Afrin, Syria and Reyhanli, Turkey.
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REYHANLI,\u00a0Turkey\u00a0\u2014 Doctors in Turkey say initial tests of blood samples from victims of a suspected chemical weapons attack in\u00a0Syria\u00a0last month are negative for sarin gas. Medics tested the blood samples \u2014 which were taken from some 13 victims of an attack that included white powder in the northern village of Saraqeb on April 29 \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":70253,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[7455],"class_list":["post-70252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-syria","tag-chemical-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}