Turkey denies use of chemical weapons in Syria's Afrin

A senior Turkish official has denied the claims by a monitoring group and Syrian state media that Turkey's military used chemical weapons on civilians in its operation against the Kurdish YPG fighters in northwestern Syria.

"It is out of question for Turkey to use an internationally prohibited war tool in Afrin," Yasin Aktay, a chief adviser to the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told Al Jazeera over the phone on Sunday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, said six people were wounded in Turkish shelling in Al-Sheikh Hadid in the Afrin region on Friday had difficulties breathing and had their pupils dilated.

"Medical sources confirmed the use of gases during the shelling, but the Syrian Observatory was not able, until now, to know the type of the used gases," a statement by the group said.

SANA, the official Syrian news agency, quoting local doctors, repeated the claim, and said that six people were hospitalised with symptoms of suffocation from Turkish projectiles carrying poisonous gas.

Hediye Yusuf, a Syrian Kurdish politician, posted photos of several allegedly wounded men on Twitter on Saturday, claiming they were exposed to a sarin gas attack by Turkish forces.

"The Afrin operation, and the Syrian war in general, have become a war of propaganda. And Turkey's rivals are trying to make up for the war they are losing on the ground through this propaganda," he added.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA NEWS