This photo provided Monday, Sept 25, 2017, by the Ghouta Media Center, a Syrian activist media group, shows smoke and debris rising after Syrian government shelling of the rebel-held Jobar neighborhood of Damascus, Syria.

:: The Syrian government said on Wednesday that claims by the French and US foreign ministers that it was still using chemical weapons were “lies.”

On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the Syrian government may still be using chemical weapons, following a suspected chlorine attack in the rebel enclave of eastern Ghouta on Monday.

Rescue workers in the rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta, near to Damascus, accused government forces of using chlorine gas during bombardment of the area on Monday. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 13 people had suffered suffocation in the incident.

President Bashar al-Assad’s government denies using chemical weapons, which it agreed to destroy in 2013 under an agreement brokered by Russia and the United States.

“Only yesterday more than 20 civilians, mostly children, were victims of an apparent chlorine gas attack,” Tillerson said after attending a conference on chemical weapons in Paris.

Serious concerns

“The recent attacks in Eastern Ghouta raise serious concerns that Bashar al-Assad may be continuing to use chemical weapons against his own people.” Eastern Ghouta is the last major rebel-held zone near Damascus and where at least 390,000 civilians have been besieged for four years.

“Russia ultimately bears responsibility for the victims in Eastern Ghouta and countless other Syrians targeted with chemical weapons since Russia became involved in Syria,” said Tillerson.

Russia is a close ally of Assad, providing direct military support in Syria against the various rebel groups trying to oust him and also diplomatic cover in the UN Security Council.

Tillerson was speaking during a meeting hosted by France on an initiative to target those responsible for chemical attacks, largely in Syria, after an international investigation into who is to blame for chemical weapons attacks in Syria ended in November after Russian opposition.

Russian failure

A joint inquiry of the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) determined that the Syrian government used the nerve agent sarin in an April 4, 2017, attack and also used several times chlorine as a weapon.

“Russia’s failure to resolve the chemical weapons issue in Syria calls into question its relevance to the resolution of the overall crisis,” Tillerson said, adding there was mounting evidence since April 2014 that Syria still had chemical weapons.

“There is simply no denying that Russia, by shielding its Syrian ally, has breached its commitments to the United States as a framework guarantor,” he added.