Chemical Weapons Used in Syria?

Syria has accused rebel groups of carrying out a chemical weapon attack in a suburb of Aleppo that is alleged to have killed 25 people.

The Russian foreign ministry said it also had information showing that the rebels had carried out a chemical weapons attack.
This afternoon the White House said it was "looking carefully" at allegations that a chemical weapons attack had taken place, with a spokesman saying there was "no evidence" yet to substantiate the claim that the rebels were responsible.

 However, the rebels have denied the attacks, and instead accused the Syrian government forces of carrying out the attack with a long range missile.

Neither of the accusations could immediately be verified, and a chemical weapons expert in the U.K. told CBSNews.com there was very little evidence to suggest any actual chemical weapons had been deployed. A U.S. official, speaking anonymously to the Associated Press, also said there was no evidence of a chemical attack. Also expressing doubts was the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which reported no independent information of chemical weapons use.

At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney told reporters the administration had no evidence to suggest the rebels had used chemical weapons, but added: "We are looking carefully at the information as it comes in... This is an issue that has been made very clear by the president to be of great concern to us."

The Syrian state news agency SANA said "terrorists" had fired a rocket "containing chemical materials" into the area around the village of Khan al-Assal in the northern province of Aleppo. The regime regularly uses the term terrorists to refer to rebels fighting to overthrow authoritarian President Bashar Assad. Russia, one of the Syrian regime's few remaining allies, joined the Assad regime in accusing the rebels of carrying out a chemical attack, calling it an "extremely dangerous" development in the crisis. The Foreign Ministry in Moscow said rebels had detonated a munition containing an unidentified chemical agent early Tuesday in Aleppo province, without giving further details.

There are some no-so-obvious implications to this, if it is true. Both Israel and the United States have claimed to be carefully monitoring the stockpiles of chemical weapons to prevent them from falling into the hands of the rebel groups, or being used by Assad's regime. If this story is correct, it suggests that the U.S. and Israel have failed at passively monitoring the chemical weapons, and may not know where all of the weapons are located; or, that the rebels have been able to manufacture their own chemical weapons or obtained them from another source; or that the U.S. and/or Israel were unable to stop the capture or use of the weapons. The bottom line is that some of these chemical weapons may make their way out of Syria for use by Al Qaeda elsewhere.