A helicopter dropped containers of toxic gas overnight on a Syrian town hours after a Russian chopper was shot down nearby, local rescuers said Tuesday.
A Syrian Civil Defense spokesman said the attack affected 33 civilians, primarily women and children, in the rebel-held city of Saraqeb in Idlib province, Reuters reported.
The group suspects that helicopters dropped chlorine and shards of metal on the neighborhood. It is unclear who is responsible.
The opposition Syrian National Coalition blamed the attack on the Assad regime. President Bashar al-Assad has denied using chemical weapons during the country’s ongoing civil war, despite strong evidence to the contrary. The United Nations, for example, found that sarin gas was used in Eastern Ghouta in 2013, killing about 1,429 people. The Assad regime denied any involvement, although most observers believe his regime was responsible for the attack. Chemical agents have been used several times since then, and both the regime and rebels accuse each other of using such weapons but deny doing so themselves.
"After shelling, besieging, and killing civilians, and perpetrating war crimes on them, the Assad regime has resorted once again, and in breach of U.N. resolutions 2118 and 2235, to using chemical substances and toxic gasses," the Syrian National Coalition said in a statement Tuesday.
The spokesman said the incident marked the second time toxic gas had been dropped on Saraqeb.
The gas attack occurred hours after Syrian rebels downed a Russian helicopter near Saraqeb on Monday, killing three crew members and two officers who were on board.
The crash was the single deadliest incident for the Russian military since entering the Syrian civil war that Moscow has publicly acknowledged.
Russian authorities claimed the helicopter was shot down while returning to the military’s Khmeimim air base after delivering humanitarian aid to the besieged city of Aleppo.
Russia escalated its military involvement in Syria in September 2015 to help keep Assad in power, relying mainly on airpower to target rebel forces.