Press release

Foreign Secretary statement on international investigation into Syria chemical weapons attack

Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) publishes a statement on its investigation into the chemical weapons attack on Khan Sheikhoun in Syria on 4 April 2017. The OPCW confirms that deadly nerve agent sarin was used in the horrific attack.

This was published under the 2016 to 2019 May Conservative government

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said:

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has now confirmed that sarin nerve gas was indeed used in a chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in northern Syria on 4 April.

This confirmation cannot be ignored. The UN-OPCW Joint Investigative Mechanism will now work to identify who was responsible. As I have said previously, the UK’s own assessment is that the Assad regime almost certainly carried out this abominable attack.

I urge our international partners to unite behind the need to hold those responsible for this atrocity to account.

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Published 30 June 2017