Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has reportedly ordered the killing of hundreds of people, by one report as many as 1,300 on Wednesday in what is being called the world's worst chemical weapons attack in decades. Syria is fighting a deadly battle with rebels due to an uprising as a part of the Arab Spring.
Western and regional countries have called for UN chemical weapons investigators to be urgently dispatched to the scene of one of the deadliest incidents of the two-year-old civil war. Images, including some by freelance photographers reportedly showed scores of bodies including of small children, laid on the floor.
If the scale of the killing were confirmed, it would be the worst known use of chemical weapons since Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1988. The war has created a major impact in the neighbouring countries as well.