On Sunday night, 60 Minutes aired some of the most shocking and unedited footage from the 2013 sarin gas attack on the town of Damascus.
The attack was labeled by the Secretary General of the United Nations as a "crime against humanity." No one has been held accountable.
Sarin gas is a nerve gas that is that is banned in virtually every country; the mere possession of it is a crime. The gas is odorless and colorless. It is also heavier than air and within seconds seeped under doorways in a matter of seconds. The attack happened late in the early morning hours of August 21, 2013.
Kassem Eid described the rockets that exploded about 300 feet away from where he was living, as silent. Eid also said that in seconds he lost his ability to breathe and his eyes burned. Sarin gas causes paralysis of the respiratory system, so oxygen cannot get to the brain, and victims lose control of their muscles.
This is the deadliest sarin gas attack on civilians since 1988, when Saddam Hussein bombed his own citizens in Iraq. The gas was banned in 1997 along with other chemical weapons. In August 2012 President Obama set a red line when intelligence indicated Bashar Al-Assad’s regime was capable of using chemical weapons and asked for Assad to hand over Syrian’s stockpile of chemical weapons.
Just days after the attack, the White House determined that Assad was responsible for the attacks on the thousands of innocent people, roughly half of which were children. U.S. intelligence has said the gas attacks were out of frustration from the Syrian army and the dictatorship after years of shelling and starving failed to break the rebels.