The United States ambassador to the United Nations said the United States was trying to establish what really happened before it considers a response to the alleged poison gas attack on a village north of Damascus, according to The Washington Post.
Both sides in Syria's civil war blamed each other for the alleged attack that reportedly injured scores of people Friday amid an ongoing international effort to rid the country of chemical weapons, the Post reported.
Online videos posted by rebel activists showed pale-faced men, women and children gasping for breath at what appeared to be a field hospital, according to the Post.
"We are trying to run this down," said Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the Post reported. "So far it's unsubstantiated, but we've shown, I think, in the past that we will do everything in our power to establish what has happened and then consider possible steps in response."
Opposition groups, including the main Western-backed Syrian National Coalition, said the poison gas attack at Kfar Zeita hurt dozens of people, thought it did not identify the gas used, according to the Post.
State-run Syrian television blamed members of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front rebel group for the attack, saying they used chlorine gas to kill two people and injured more than 100, the Post reported. It did not say how it confirmed chlorine was used.
Chlorine is one of the most commonly manufactured chemicals in the U.S. and when used as a gas can be deadly, according to the Post.
Adham Raadoun, an opposition activist on the edge of Kfar Zeita, said government helicopters dropped a number of barrel bombs on the village that appeared to carry the toxic gas, killing one person and choking about 100 people, many of them in their homes, the Post reported.
The Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights said that at least 16 rebels were among those who died in the overnight combat, according to the Post. At least 13 civilians also were killed when government aircraft dropped barrel bombs on the city's rebel-held districts.
Another activist group, the Syrian-based Local Coordination Committees, said Assad's warplanes launched fresh airstrikes there on Sunday, the Post reported. Aleppo, Syria's largest urban center and its one-time commercial hub, has been a key front in the civil war.
Both activist groups also reported airstrikes on rebel positions in a village in the oil-rich Deir el-Zour province near the Iraqi border, according to the Post. The Observatory said the strikes killed at least four people and wounded scores.
