US, UK and Israel have increasingly been claiming that they have „proof“ that the Syrian Army used Sarin gas in Aleppo. This is however very unlikely, for many reasons:

1. A man is quoted who says his wife and his two children died because of a Sarin grenade that had fallen into his house. He says he felt a „a sharp, bitter odor„, but this does not make sense because Sarin is odorless.
2. Incidentally a team of US experts came very quickly to the house of the victim and took hair samples to analyze in a lab. This does not make sense either because Sarin is a volatile gas. It does not „remain“ to leave a trace.
3. Chemical weapons are weapons of mass destruction as can be seen from the Iraqi attack on Halabja in 1988 when within one day 5000 people died. Neither are chemical weapons suited for small scale attacks nor does it make sense militarily to kill single civilians with them.
4. The US has made clear many times that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian Army would constitute passing a red line which could trigger a US military intervention. Why should the Syrian Army expose itself to such a danger only to have killed few civilians?
5. Syria has made clear that they would not use chemical weapons in an internal conflict and in any case using chemical weapons is a last resort. The military situation is by far not that bad that the regime would need to take such suicidal measures.
6. It is by now well known that the rebels are not a united power but consist of many different groups with varying degrees of radicalism, not to mention that a sizable portion of the rebels are non-Syrians. There is no way to rule out that either the attack- if it happened – was a false flag attack or that the reports about it are made up to draw the US into the war, especially since the rebels have suffered military setbacks in the recent weeks. The rebels would have a clear and undeniable motivation to let the world believe chemical weapons were used, while it is completely to the disadvantage of the Syrian government to use them.