Khan Sheikhoun chemical attack: Doctor tells of ‘day from hell’

WARNING: This story contains distressing images.

“Can you imagine what the end of the world will be like?”

Dr Marmoun Morad no longer imagines because he said he saw it on the day sarin gas was dropped on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun.

The 65-year-old Syrian surgeon has been working in his war-torn homeland for years but nothing prepared him for April 4.

“Do you think anyone can guess what it will look like? It was a day from hell,” he said.

“No matter how much I’ll tell you, or explain to you and what I say, I can’t explain enough the scale of this.”

The surgeon is the first doctor present at the scene of the attack who has managed to leave Syria and can now tell the whole story of what happened that day.

Dr Morad told Lateline he had no doubts over who was behind the attack. He was on his way to work that day, when he says he saw a regime warplane in the sky above Khan Sheikhoun.

“I heard the warning on the radio scanner, there is an airplane, Sukhoi 22 about to take off: ‘to the people in North Hama, be careful, to the north Idlib people be careful’,” he told Lateline.

After five or 10 minutes, the doctor heard an SOS on the radio.

“People are passing out and dying on the ground,” he said.

“When we heard that, I’ve told the staff in Zayta hospital, this is for sure chemicals.

“We went back to the attack area and we saw people flat on the ground, some were dead, some wounded, some were alive.

“We washed them off, we cleaned them, we treated some, we realised that their eye pupils were pinpointed.”

Photo: Images of this Syrian child gasping for breath were flashed around the world. Dr Morad said he has since been told the boy died. (Supplied)

Dr Morad had to direct the medical staff amid the chaos.

“We we’re treating them and crying. We were working and crying — the doctors, and all the medical staff and the wounded too.”

He said he was told one little boy, who was filmed struggling to breathe and whose image flashed around the world, didn’t make it.

“We washed him, we gave him atropine, we gave him hydrocortisone, we also gave him oxygen and performed intubation. Then we referred him to the north but he died on the road,” he said.

MORE Khan Sheikhoun chemical attack: Doctor tells of ‘day from hell’ – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)