A chemical weapons team on Saturday collected samples from the Syrian town of Douma, where residents reported what appeared to be a chlorine gas attack earlier this month. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed the team collected samples for testing.

Gunmen in the Syrian town of Douma opened fire on a United Nations security team visiting the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, forcing it to turn back. The attack caused yet another delay in the fact-finding mission to verify the chemical assault. Ahmet Uzumcu, who heads the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said the team on Tuesday returned to the Syrian capital, Damascus, after gunmen shot at them and detonated an explosive device.

International inspectors on Tuesday arrived in the Syrian town of Douma where first responders and residents reported a chemical attack earlier this month. The team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons had waited in the Syrian capital since Saturday for permission from Syrian and Russian authorities to enter Douma. Syrian activists accused government troops of staging the April 7 chemical attack that killed at least 40 people.

Hundreds of Syrians on Monday gathered in the central Omayyad Square in Damascus to show support for the country’s armed forces after the United States and its Western allies targeted Syria with retaliatory airstrikes over the weekend. The United States, Britain, and France, struck sites linked to Syria’s chemical weapons program after reports of a chemical attack April 7 in the Syrian town of Douma. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his chief ally, Russia, both denied the chemical attack took place.

The latest grim scenes from Syria come in a grim month. April marks the anniversary of the Armenian genocide, the ethnic and religious cleansing by the Ottoman Turks beginning in 1915. It saw the killing of 1.5 million Armenians and 250,000 Assyrian Christians, forever changing the complexion of Turkey and neighbors Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Long-timers contend, rightly, Islamic extremism gained ground in that soil as religious and ideological diversity nearly was obliterated.

With the snap of a camera, a photojournalist immortalized the most agonizing moment of Kim Phuc Phan Thi’s life: The 9-year-old girl was running from air raids on the Vietnamese village of Trang Bang, naked, arms spread, screaming in pain from the napalm burning her neck, back, and arms.

The Syrian government has gained control of the town of Douma in the Eastern Ghouta rebel enclave, the Russian military said Thursday. If confirmed, it would signal a victory for President Bashir al-Assad’s troops and their Syrian allies after staging a Russian-backed offensive in the region. “The raised state flag over a building in the town of Douma has heralded the control over this location and therefore over the whole of Eastern Ghouta,” said Maj. Gen.