Deformed babies born in Syria after Ghouta gas attack - Telegraph

Deformed babies born in Syria after Ghouta gas attack - Telegraph

Revealed: nine months on from chemical gas
attack on rebels, mothers delivering children born with birth defects
and stillborn<p>The Syr­i­an regime is fac­ing accu­sa­tions from
medics that its use of chem­i­cal weapons against rebel-held areas
is now result­ing in birth defects and genet­i­cal­ly mal­formed
new­borns.<p>One doc­tor said the inci­dents of still­borns at a
clin­ic for refugees across the bor­der in Arsal, Lebanon, was run­ning
at more than one in 10 births, while videos post­ed by activists show
badly dam­aged infants being born in local clin­ics.<p>The
par­ents of a baby born with a deformed face who died last week near
Dam­as­cus have also said they are con­vinced that expo­sure to gas is
respon­si­ble.<p>The baby girl, called Fatma Abdul Gha­far, from
the sub­urb of <b>east­ern Ghou­ta</b> was born last
Tues­day but died nine hours later.<p>Mah­moud Abdul, 26, the
father, told the Tele­graph that the doc­tor super­vis­ing the birth had
said expo­sure to what the Unit­ed Nations con­firmed was sarin gas was
the most like­ly expla­na­tion for her defor­mi­ty.<p>Sarin is a
nerve agent - clear, colour­less, and taste­less, with no
odour.<p>His wife inhaled the gas dur­ing an attack on the sub­urb
last August, while she was in her first month of preg­nan­cy, but had
appeared to recov­er.<p>“When the chem­i­cal attack hap­pened
Marwa my wife smelled gas and was ill,” he said. “We took her to a
med­ical point where she was show­ered and got bet­ter. The baby was
born in a very bad way. So she died the next morning.”<p>Mr
Gha­far dis­missed sug­ges­tions that hered­i­tary defects or other
envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors could have been the cause. Nei­ther his
fam­i­ly or that of his 17-year old wife had suf­fered pre­vi­ous
inci­dents of defor­mi­ties.<p>Activists in east­ern Ghou­ta are
con­vinced the child died as a result of the moth­er’s
expo­sure.<p>More than 1,000 peo­ple includ­ing women and
chil­dren were killed on August 21 when regime forces dropped bombs and
rock­ets on two sep­a­rate areas of Ghou­ta in an effort to dis­lodge
entrenched rebel resis­tance.<p>Some 3,600 peo­ple affect­ed were
treat­ed for symp­toms, accord­ing to a report by the char­i­ty,
Medecins Sans Fron­tieres. “The fam­i­ly of the baby are from east
Ghou­ta but they live now in anoth­er area which is under the con­trol
of the regime” said Ali Baz, the head of a net­work of cit­i­zen
jour­nal­ists in the area, Syria Mubashr.<p>The net­work
pub­lished a video and issued reports on the fate of Fatma. “Doc­tors
who ex …

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10831062/Deformed-babies-born-in-Syria-after-Ghouta-gas-attack.html