The Telegraph
Britain has agreed to EU sanctions on sixteen members of the Syrian regime who are suspected of using chemical weapons on civilians.
Senior military officers and scientists were among those hit with the sanctions, which follow reports of chlorine bombs and sarin nerve gas being used by Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, on his own people.
“The UK condemns the use of chemical weapons wherever and by whomever they are used and we will continue to work closely with our international partners to hold perpetrators to account," said Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, on Sunday.
“The sixteen individuals sanctioned include military officers and chemical specialists responsible for abhorrent chemical weapons attacks on innocent men, women and children.
“The UK helped push for these sanctions which send a clear signal to the Syrian regime that their barbaric actions have consequences.”
Mr Johnson will attend a Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels on Monday, where he will formally agree to the sanctions with EU leaders.
The sanctions will freeze the financial assets of the sixteen Syrians and restrict their ability to travel. According to the United Nations (UN), there were at least three incidents in Syria in 2016 where chlorine was used by the regime.
And in April 2017, around 100 people were killed and many others injured in Khan Sheikhoun following a sarin nerve gas attack.
The British government has said that it believes Assad was directly responsible for the attack in Khan Sheikhoun. It came as the Syrian army said it had seized a string of oil wells in southwest Raqqa province with help from Russian airstrikes, as retreating Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil) militants battled to defend their remaining territory in the country.
State-owned Ikhbariyah television quoted a military source as saying the army had taken control of Wahab, al Fahd, Dbaysan, al-Qseer, Abu al Qatat and Abu Qatash oil fields and several other villages in the desert area that lies in the southwest of Raqqa province.
The seized oil fields lie south of the town of Rasafa and its oil wells, which the army took last month from the militants in their first major territorial gains inside the province.
The army and Iranian-backed militias have in the last few months been advancing east of Aleppo city and seizing swathes of territory west of the Euphrates River that militants have pulled out of to defend their de facto capital of Raqqa, where they are now battling US-backed troops inside the city.