article_snippet: Last week, Syrian activists and the Western-backed opposition accused the government of carrying out a devastating chlorine gas attack against a rebel-held town in Idlib that killed at least six people and left dozens, including children, choking and gasping for breath.
article_snippet: The reported use of poison gas on the town of Sarmin was the first alleged chemical attack since the U.N. Security Council approved a  resolution  that condemns the use of toxic chemicals such as chlorine in Syria.
article_snippet: But a Syrian military official in Damascus denied any government role in the first alleged chemical attack and blamed the first alleged chemical attack on rebels, adding: 'the Free Syria Army did not and will never use any internationally-prohibited weapon.'
article_snippet: Yesterday, two car bombs killed at least 25 people and wounded another 80 celebrating the new year festival of Nowruz in the mainly Kurdish city of Hassaka in northeastern Syria, according to state media.
article_snippet: The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights group, which tracks the four-year-old Syrian civil war, said 33 people, including children, were killed in the attack which The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said was carried out by Islamic State.
highlights_snippet: More than 200,000 estimated dead in last four years of civil war .