Assad Suggests Chemical Attack Was “a Play” Staged by Al Qaeda and the U.S.

BASHAR AL-ASSAD, the Syrian president, suggested in an interview broadcast on Thursday that social media evidence of a deadly chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town in northern Syria last week was fake. The images that shocked the world, he said, were most likely of “a play,” staged by Islamist rebels affiliated with both Al Qaeda and the United States.

Speaking to the French news agency AFP in English, Assad first noted that the town of Khan Sheikhoun, where the mass poisoning took place, “is under the control of Al Nusra Front, which is a branch of Al Qaeda — so the only information the world has had till this moment is published by Al Qaeda.”  Read more.