Special to WorldTribune.com

TEL AVIV — Syrian President Bashar Assad was said to have renewed chemical attacks on Sunni rebels.

Israel’s intelligence community has determined that Assad approved limited CW attacks against rebels.

Intelligence sources said the community determined that Syrian security forces were using a non-lethal CW agent meant to block rebel operations.

“This agent neutralizes but does not kill,” a source said.

In a briefing on April 7, a senior intelligence official did not identify the agent. The official said Assad forces fired projectiles with the CW agent in a battle with rebels in the Damascus suburb of Jobar in late March.

“The substance that the Syrian police force used caused breathing problems,” the official said.

So far, Assad forces used the CW agent twice in late March in Eastern Ghouta, the southern suburbs of Damascus. Scores of rebels were injured in one CW attack in the Damascus-area village of Harasta.

The Syrian opposition said at least four people were killed in a CW
attack on March 27. The opposition said the attack in Harasta consisted of
poisonous gas.

“Symptoms suffered by patients included hallucination, accelerated
pulse, trouble breathing and, in some cases, suffocation,” the Syrian
American Medical Society said.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has determined
that Syria surrendered 45 percent of its CW arsenal. Under pressure, the
Assad regime has facilitated CW shipments to the Syrian port of Latakia.

“The substance was not on the list of prohibited substances,” the
official said.

  Bashar Assad, Harasta, Israeli intel: Assad used chemical agent in March ‘that neutralizes but does not kill’, Jobar, Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons