On April 7th, there was a chemical attack in Duoma, Syria, in which Forty to sixty people died and between

500 to 1,000 people

needed medical help.

On Friday 13th, experts from OPCW reported that they would take samples from victims and from the site of the alleged attack.

Washington and London said with ‘very high confidence’ that the Syrian government carried out the attack. Syria claims it did
not carry out the attack, and Russia stated that Britain staged the attack as a pretext for launching a wider military assault on
Syria. The UK, unsurprisingly, says that this is not true.

Regardless of there being no agreement on who carried out the attack, the USA, UK and France attacked Syria. British Prime
Minister Theresa May said that chemical weapons storage and production facilities were hit.

Why is there a war in Syria?

UT

A peaceful uprising against the president of Syria seven years ago has turned into a full-scale civil war. The conflict has left more than
350,000 people dead, devastated cities and drawn in other countries.

How did the Syrian war start?

Even before the conflict began, many Syrians were complaining about high unemployment, corruption and a lack of political freedom
under President Bashar al-Assad, who succeeded his late father Hafez in 2000.

In March 2011, pro-democracy demonstrations erupted in Deraa, inspired by the "Arab Spring" in neighbouring countries.
When the government used deadly force to crush the dissent, protests demanding the president's resignation erupted nationwide.

The unrest spread and the crackdown intensified. Opposition supporters took up arms, first to defend themselves and later to rid their
areas of security forces. Mr Assad vowed to crush what he called "foreign-backed terrorism".

The violence rapidly escalated and the country descended into civil war.

How many people have died?

IMAGES
The SYRIAHR had documented the deaths of 353,900 people by March 2018, including 106,000 civilians.

The figure did not include 56,900 people who it said were missing and presumed dead. The group also estimated 100,000 deaths had not
been documented.