Syria Finds Assad-Era Chemical Weapons Sites, Detains 18 Suspects

by Emmitt Barry, Worthy News Washington D.C. Bureau Chief

(Worthy News) – Syria’s transitional leadership has uncovered remnants of former President Bashar al-Assad’s secret chemical weapons program, including undeclared munitions, raw materials, and equipment linked to the production of deadly nerve agents, according to officials cited by Reuters and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Mohamad Katoub, Syria’s permanent representative to the OPCW in The Hague, said Syrian authorities have also detained 18 suspects accused of involvement in Assad’s chemical weapons network. The suspects include senior military, political, and technical officials, several of whom reportedly served as major generals under the former regime.

Their names have not been released because the investigation remains ongoing. Katoub said at least four of those detained were already listed under European, British, or U.S. sanctions.

The discoveries mark a major development for Syria’s new government, which has pledged to cooperate with the international community after the fall of Assad in December 2024 and to remove the remnants of weapons of mass destruction left behind by the former regime.

According to the OPCW, inspection teams working with Syrian authorities visited several high-priority undeclared sites in northern coastal and central Syria. The watchdog said “dozens of undeclared chemical munitions,” including aerial bombs and rockets, were found alongside chemicals and related equipment.

Katoub said Syrian teams, working for months with OPCW inspectors, located more than 70 rockets and aerial bombs, as well as raw ingredients used in the production of sarin, the nerve agent used in some of the deadliest attacks of Syria’s civil war.

Sarin was used in the August 2013 attack on Ghouta, near Damascus, which killed more than 1,300 people, and in the March 2017 attack on Al-Lataminah. Chemical weapons investigators have previously concluded that Assad’s forces repeatedly used sarin, chlorine, and sulfur mustard gas during the war.

Officials also found chemical weapons mixing and storage equipment, along with hexamine, a stabilizing agent previously linked to Assad-era sarin production.

“Despite the secrecy, the danger, and the immense security challenges … today we delivered for the Syrian people and for the world,” Katoub said. “It is the first time such munitions could be recovered before they were used in crimes against the Syrian people.”

Syria joined the Chemical Weapons Convention in 2013 after international outrage over the Ghouta attack and declared a 1,300-ton chemical weapons stockpile. However, international inspectors later found that chemical attacks continued, and the OPCW has said as many as 100 sites across Syria may still require inspection.

The OPCW has also found that the Islamic State used chemical weapons during Syria’s civil war, underscoring the continuing danger that toxic munitions could fall into the hands of terrorists or other rogue actors.

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