Russia Warns: Al Qaeda Is Planning a Sarin Gas Attack in Syria

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Russia Warns: Al Qaeda Is Planning a Sarin Gas Attack in Syria

July 3, 2017 (EIRNS)—A military-diplomatic source told Sputnik on July 2 that the Jabhat Fatah al Sham terrorist group, the current incarnation of Al Qaeda in Syria, is reportedly preparing provocations at a storage facility in Syria’s Idlib province which contains sarin gas, which they intend to use in the towns of Khan Sheikhoun and Kefraya.

"According to the obtained information, a preparation for organizing a provocation with the use of the sarin poisonous chemical is being carried out in the Al Magarah settlement [in Idlib province], in a big technological building. The shells with this poisonous gas are presumably held in this storage,"

the source said.

"There are reasons to believe that this provocation will be committed in the settlements of Khan Sheikhoun and Kefraya. Its goal is to discredit the Syrian government and to wreck the Astana negotiation process scheduled for July 4-5,"

the source added.

First Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security, Frants Klintsevich, stated that he considered the intelligence reliable, and linked the planned provocation to the presence of the American aircraft carrier U.S.S. George H.W. Bush in the eastern Mediterranean.

"As soon as [the group] arrives, the provocation with the use of chemical weapons will occur and the United States will launch an air attack,"

he told Sputnik.

The U.S.S. George H.W. Bush was launching air strikes in Syria until this past weekend, when it put into port in Haifa, Israel, for a port call from which it is scheduled to leave on July 5.