REPORT: Syrian soldiers enter rebel tunnels, see chemical agents - Syrian state TV

                                               
Syrian state television said soldiers found chemical agents in rebel tunnels in the Damascus suburb of Jobar on Saturday and said some soldiers were suffocating.    

"Army soldiers are entering the tunnels of the terrorists and saw chemical agents," state television quoted a "news source" as saying. "In some cases, soldiers are suffocating while entering Jobar," it said.            

"Ambulances came to rescue the people who were suffocating in Jobar," it said, adding that an army unit was preparing to storm the suburb in which rebels fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad are based.                 

Syrian activists accuse Assad's forces of launching a nerve gas attack in Jobar and other suburbs before dawn on Wednesday, killing hundreds.    
           
On another note, UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Angela Kane arrived in Syria on Saturday to push for access to a suspected chemical weapons attack site for UN inspectors, who are already in Syria to investigate previous accusations.               

This as US naval forces are moving closer to Syria as President Barack Obama considers military options for responding to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad government. The president emphasized that a quick intervention in the Syrian civil war was problematic, given the international considerations that should precede a military strike.                                   

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel declined to discuss any specific force movements while saying that Obama had asked the Pentagon to prepare military options for Syria.                       
US defense officials told The Associated Press that the Navy had sent a fourth warship armed with ballistic missiles into the eastern Mediterranean Sea but without immediate orders for any missile launch into Syria.                                 

"The Defense Department has a responsibility to provide the president with options for contingencies, and that requires positioning our forces, positioning our assets, to be able to carry out different options  whatever options the president might choose," Hagel told reporters traveling with him to Asia.                             

Obama remained cautious about getting involved in a war that has killed more than 100,000 people and now includes Hezbollah and al-Qaeda. He made no mention of the "red line" of chemical weapons use that he marked out for Syrian President Bashar Assad a year ago and that US intelligence says has been breached at least on a small scale several times since.                              

Syria's uprising against four decades of Assad family rule has turned into a civil war that has killed more than 100,000 people.             

Britain says defence chiefs to discuss Syria:     

The chiefs of defence of Britain and other countries will meet in Jordan on Aug. 26 to discuss the situation in Syria, a British Ministry of Defence spokesman said on Saturday.          

The meeting is the third that the top military officers have held this year to better understand the situation in Syria and how neighboring countries can be helped to manage the risks to the region, he said.           

The meeting was long-planned and was not called in response to a reported chemical weapons attack near Damascus, the spokesman said. A French army spokesman said France's defence chief had also been invited, and that the meeting was long-planned.

Doctors Without Borders:

Doctors Without Borders says some 355 people who showed "neurotoxic symptoms" died following the suspected chemical weapons attack this week near Syria's capital.              

The Paris-based humanitarian aid group said Saturday that three hospitals it supports in the Damascus region reported receiving roughly 3,600 patients who showed such symptoms over less than three hours on Wednesday morning.              

A debate has ensued about who was behind the alleged gas attack on rebel-held Damascus suburbs that activists previously said killed more than 130 people. The attack has spurred demands for an independent investigation and renewed talk of potential international military action, if chemical weapons were indeed used.                 

Anti-government activists accuse the Syrian government of carrying out the toxic gas attack on the eastern suburbs of Damascus and have reported death tolls ranging from 136 to 1,300.

Reactions:          

Iran's new president has condemned the use of chemical weapons in Syria's civil war without blaming a side for it.        

The comments by President Hasan Rouhani on Saturday, broadcast by Iranian state television, come as his government is a major backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad.             
In his speech at the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Rouhani spoke about how Iran previously was the victim of chemical warfare during its 1980s war with Iraq. The president said the death of innocent people through the use of chemical weapons was "very distressing."               


AP/REUTERS


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