Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has denied his forces used poison gas to attack a rebel-held town in Idlib, which killed 87 people, including more than 30 children. In an interview recorded Wednesday with the AFP news agency, Assad said reports of the attack were “100 percent” fabricated.

President Bashar al-Assad: “There was no order to make any attack. We don’t have any chemical weapons. We gave up our arsenal three years ago. Even if we have them, we wouldn’t use them. And we have never used our chemical arsenal in our history.”

Assad suggested that children seen in widely circulated video of the incident were in fact child actors pretending to be dead. Assad’s interview was broadcast as inspectors with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said Thursday samples taken from the site tested positive for the nerve agent sarin.