Contamination caused by rebels' chemical arsenal, Moscow says

DAMASCUS - The death toll from a suspected chemical attack on a northern Syrian town rose to 72 on Wednesday while rescue workers kept finding more terrified survivors hiding in shelters near the site of the harrowing assault, one of the deadliest in years.

The attack on Khan Sheikhoun left residents gasping for breath and convulsing in the streets and overcrowded hospitals. Videos from the scene showed volunteer medics using fire hoses to wash the chemicals from victims' bodies.

Doctors said a combination of toxic gases are suspected to have been released during the airstrikes, causing the high death toll and severe symptoms.

Russia's Defense Ministry said on Wednesday that a poisonous gas contamination in Khan Sheikhoun was the result of gas leaking from a rebel chemical weapons depot after it was hit by Syrian government airstrikes.

"Yesterday, from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm local time, Syrian aviation made a strike on a large terrorist ammunition depot and a concentration of military hardware in the eastern outskirts of Khan Sheikhoun town," Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konoshenkov said in a statement posted on YouTube.

"On the territory of the depot there were workshops which produced chemical warfare munitions."

The Syrian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that the Syrian army doesn't have any kind of chemical weapons. The ministry blasted in a statement as completely baseless reports accusing the Syrian air force of carrying out a toxic gas attack on the rebel-held town on Tuesday.

The ministry stressed that "the Syrian army doesn't possess chemical weapons and hasn't used them before in any Syrian city".

UN emergency meeting

Meanwhile, Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said the rebels carried out the chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun.

He said that the government has fulfilled all of its commitments toward the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

The Syrian official also urged the international community to hold accountable the parties behind the attack.

Also on Wednesday, the UN Security Council was to hold an emergency meeting in response to the strike and in Brussels, officials from 70 nations gathered for a major donors' conference on the future of Syria and the region.

The Tuesday attack wasn't the first reported in Syria, as chemical weapons were said to have taken place in several areas in Syria in the past years, with the government and the rebels trading accusations.

As many as 1,400 people were killed when several opposition-controlled areas in the suburbs around Damascus were struck by rockets containing chemical agent sarin on Aug 21, 2013. Both the opposition and the government blamed each other.

In the same year, a chemical attack hit the then government-controlled town of Khan al-Asal, in which several Syrian soldiers and civilians were either killed. The government accused the rebels, who, in turn, denied the accusation.

A child receives treatment at a small hospital following a suspected toxic gas attack in Khan Sheikhoun, a nearby rebel-held town in Syria, on Tuesday.Mohamed Albakour / Agence Francepresse