On October 26 2002, to end a three-day siege on a theatre in Moscow by Chechen terrorists, Russian security forces used a secret incapacitating chemical agent (ICA) weapon believed to affect the central…
Animals have an easy life. They can run, hide, or bite back when predators are on the prowl. Plants cannot. Instead they have evolved to deploy a range of defence mechanisms including chemical warfare…
The abduction, in northern Syria, of seven Red Cross workers is a stark reminder of how dangerous it is to work in that war-torn country, even for such an internationally recognised humanitarian organisation…
The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the second international organisation to win in two years following the European Union. Alone…
The Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has announced it is sending a second team of weapons inspectors to Syria where, director-general Ahmet Üzümcü reports, destruction of al-Assad’s…
A team of inspectors from the United Nations and Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) entered Syria on Tuesday to begin the long task of finding and disposing of the country’s chemical…
Bashar Assad’s decision to sign up Syria to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) last week committed his country to verifiably give up the possession of chemical weapons and their production capabilities…
On Tuesday night Washington time, US president Barack Obama made a public plea to Congress to authorise a military action in Syria that he probably doesn’t want. The tell-tale sign Obama doesn’t actually…
There are allegations that a nerve agent was used in Syria recently. According to US officials, it killed more than 1400 people, including 400 children. But since then, in a more recent incident, a bomb…
It would take a hard-hearted person not to have been moved to tears by the images on our television screens of Syria over the last week - of infants struggling to breathe while their parents looked on…
As the drums beat louder for the possibility of Western military intervention in Syria, we have seen discussion of an intervention on moral, strategic and practical grounds. But so far none of the major…
It’s been a little more than a week since reports surfaced of a large-scale chemical weapon attack in Syria. Governments in Europe and the United States have accused the Syrian government of attacking…
The motive and timing of the alleged chemical attack last week in Damascus appear strange, but Western powers including the US, UK and France, backed by other regional players including Turkey now seem…
As UN inspectors finally began their search for evidence of chemical weapons being used in Syria, on Wednesday Damascus apparently suffered the worst attack of this kind yet in this conflict. Some reports…
President Obama’s confirmation that the United States would begin arming Syrian rebels has prompted an urgent debate about both the legality and the effectiveness of the decision. The announcement, ahead…
There was chaos on the streets of Halajba in March 1988. In this corner of Iraq, at the time Iraqi Kurdistan, people had suddenly started experiencing cold-like symptoms – tight chest and nasal congestion…