Syria: US will hold regime to account for 'morally obscene' chemical attack ... - Telegraph.co.uk

Mr Kerry said the US would not wait for the report of UN inspectors on the ground in Syria but would be "informed by conscience and guided by common sense".

He hinted at US intelligence reports confirming the Assad regime's guilt, saying America had "additional information about this attack" which would be made public "in the days ahead".

"We know that the Syrian regime maintains custody of these chemical weapons. We know that the Syrian regime has the capacity to do this with rockets. We know that the regime has been determined to clear the opposition from those very places where the attacks took place. And with our own eyes, we have all of us become witnesses," he said.

Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said it was "undeniable" that chemical weapons had been used and that there was "very little doubt" that the Assad regime was responsible.

Mr Kerry did not say whether the US would seek approval from the United Nations Security Council before launching any potential attack.

In an unusually passionate address at the State Department, Mr Kerry said he had watched "gut-wrenching" online videos of the bodies of the victims.

"I can't get the image out of my head of a man who held up his dead child, wailing while chaos swirled around him, the images of entire families dead in their beds without a drop of blood or even a visible wound, bodies contorting in spasms, human suffering that we can never ignore or forget," he said.

Mr Kerry said the levels of casualties and the reports of humanitarian groups on the ground "strongly indicate that everything these images are already screaming at us is real, that chemical weapons were used in Syria."

Although the was in Syria has already claimed more than 100,000 lives, Mr Kerry said the illegal use of chemical weapons went "beyond the conflict in Syria itself".

"This is about the large-scale indiscriminate use of weapons that the civilized world long ago decided must never be used at all, a conviction shared even by countries that agree on little else," he said.

The emphasis on deterring the Assad regime from further use of chemical weapons was echoed by Mr Carney at the White House press briefing.

"This use of chemical weapons is distinct because it so clearly violates an international norm that has been in place for a very, very long time," he said.