Toxic gas was dropped on a Syrian town near where a Russian helicopter was shot down early this week, a Syrian rescue service told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday.
A spokesman for the Syria Civil Defence said 33 people, mostly women and children, were affected by the gas, which they suspect was chlorine, in Saraqeb, in rebel-held Idlib province.
The group, which describes itself as a neutral band of search and rescue volunteers, posted a video on YouTube apparently showing a number of men struggling to breathe and being given oxygen masks by people in civil defense uniforms.
33 mostly women and children were affected in the town of Saraqeb, the spokesman told Reuters.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that barrel bombs fell on Saraqeb late on Monday and injured a large number of citizens, according to Reuters.
“I don’t have information; we don’t have information about how the operation is proceeding,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to Russian State News Agency Tass.
“It is very hard to react to such information releases: it is not always clear what they are based on, what their sources are and so on,” Tass reports Peskov said.
The Kremlin spokesman advised journalists to turn to the relevant departments for details of what was going on in the region. “Probably, these issues shouldn’t be addressed to the Kremlin,” Peskov said.
The Russian transport helicopter was shot down in Syria on Monday while ferrying humanitarian supplies. All five crew member on board were killed. It was the deadliest single incident for Russia since the country began air strikes in Syria.
