Syrian President Bashar al-Assad dismissed a suspected chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town last week as a "fabrication" to justify a US military strike, in an exclusive interview with AFP published Thursday.
"Definitely, 100 percent for us, it's fabrication. Our impression is that the West, mainly the US, is hand-in-glove with the terrorists,” Assad said in the interview, conducted on Wednesday.
“They fabricated the whole story in order to have a pretext for the attack," he went on, adding it was "not clear whether it (the attack) happened or not, because how can you verify a video? You have a lot of fake videos now."
AFP Video
The Syrian government handed over all its chemical weapons in 2013 as part of an international deal and could not have been behind the suspected chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Assad also said.
“Even if we have them, we wouldn’t use them,” he added.
The US launched a strike on a Syrian military airbase days after the alleged chemical weapons attack. But Assad maintained: "Our firepower, our ability to attack the terrorists hasn't been affected by this strike."
6941km
