"President Bashar al-Assad is still using chemical weapons against civilians, a scientific analysis of samples from multiple gas attacks has shown.
In the first independent testing of its kind, conducted exclusively for The Telegraph, soil samples from the scene of three recent attacks in the country were collected by trained individuals known to this news organisation and analysed by a chemical warfare expert.
Our results show sizeable and unambiguous traces of chlorine and ammonia present at the site of all three attacks...
The attacks, which in some cases used canisters marked with their chemical contents, were conducted by helicopter. In the Syrian civil war, only the regime has access to aerial power, making it now certain that the recent chemical attacks could only have been carried out by the regime, not the opposition.
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a British chemical weapons expert involved in the testing, said: 'We have unequivocally proved that the regime has used chlorine and ammonia against its own civilians in the last two to three weeks'...
Several people, including children, died and hundreds were seriously wounded in the attacks.
Video footage and eye witness testimony show casualties displaying symptoms typical of chlorine gas and ammonia poisoning: sore eyes, irritated skin, difficulty breathing and a bloody foaming from the mouth."