Assad: chemical weapons attack a "100 percent fabrication"

BEIRUT (AP) President Bashar Assad said a chemical attack on a rebel-held town earlier this month that was widely blamed on his forces was a "fabrication."

"Definitely, 100 percent for us, it's fabrication," Assad told Agence France-Presse in his first comments since a U.S. missile strike on a Syrian air base in response to the chemical attack.

"Our impression is that the West, mainly the United States, is hand-in-glove with the terrorists. They fabricated the whole story in order to have a pretext for the attack."

Syria strongly denied it was behind the April 4 chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun, which killed 87 people. Syria's foreign minister has said Syrian warplanes struck an al-Qaida arms depot that contained chemical weapons.

Assad denied having chemical weapons and said Syria would only allow an "impartial" investigation into the incident. A video of the interview was released by Assad's office.

The international chemical weapons watchdog is testing samples from the suspected nerve gas attack and could produce a report on the matter within three weeks, the British delegation to the commission said Thursday.

The report comes one day after Russia vetoed a Western-backed U.N. Security Council resolution demanding a speedy probe into the Khan Sheikhoun attack. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said the veto left Moscow, a key ally of the Syrian government, with "a lot to prove."

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has a standing fact-finding mission on Syria to investigate alleged chemical weapons attacks, but does not apportion blame. The OPCW's executive council met Thursday to discuss the attack on Khan Sheikhoun, in the northern rebel-held province of Idlib.

Britain's delegation to the OPCW tweeted from the executive session that the "Fact Finding Mission is working to gather evidence" and has already started testing samples in a lab.

The U.S. blamed the Syrian government for the attack and fired 59 missiles at an air base in central Syria in response, killing nine people.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he expected the OPCW to conduct an extensive probe into the attack, and insisted the organization visit both Khan Sheikhoun and the air base struck by U.S. missiles.

The Syrian army meanwhile said hundreds of Islamic State fighters as well as civilians were killed when a U.S.-led coalition airstrike hit a militant position in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour.

It said white smoke billowing from the area of the strike turned yellow, "most likely because of the explosion of a large warehouse containing large quantities of toxic substances." It said that the airstrike showed that militants have chemical weapons in their possession.

Opposition activist Omar Abu Laila, who is from Deir el-Zour and currently lives in Europe, denied that report. Abu Laila is with Deir Ezzor 24, an activist group that has reporters throughout the eastern province.