Anti-government activists, including the notorious White Helmets civil defense group, on Saturday blamed the Syrian authorities of using chemical weapons in the militant-held town of Douma in Eastern Ghouta, saying that dozens of civilians were killed and hundreds affected.

Read more

The claims have renewed calls for a Syria intervention by the West, while Damascus said they were a "fabrication" and Russia's Foreign Ministry on Sunday called them "fake news."

While a media storm immediately followed, accusing Syria's Bashar Assad of heinous crimes and predicting a new US strike against Damascus forces in response, journalists with knowledge of events on the ground in Syria wondered aloud if the claims should be treated with a grain of salt.

Independent journalist Vanessa Beeley, who visited the Syrian frontline on numerous occasions, said the chemical attack report, quickly picked up by mainstream media, was "also 100 percent lie," pointing out that the White Helmets group had been caught producing fakes before. 

The timing of the alleged chemical attack claims was questioned by journalist Caitlin Johnstone, who pointed out that reports spread "just as Trump was seeking a withdrawal from Syria and just as [Syrian President Bashar] Assad was approaching victory in Douma."

In her article on the Medium website, Johnstone doubted the credibility of the White Helmets as a source, due to their "extremely suspicious western funding and terrorist ties", also reminding readers of the Western governments' "extensive history of using lies, propaganda and false flags to manufacture support for military aggression."

The chemical attack on his own people, certain to "provoke the wrath of the US war machine," would mean that "Assad spontaneously began acting against his own self-interest," the journalist wrote. She decried the influence of the mainstream media, which she said makes such news "easier to believe that Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin are deliberately killing civilians with poisonous gas for no reason whatsoever than to believe that the same empire which deceived us into Iraq is deceiving us into Iraq's next-door neighbor Syria."

US journalist Rania Khalek said that the timing of the alleged attack was "crazy" because it has emerged when the Syrian government was in its strongest position during the whole conflict and Trump said he wanted US troops out of the country.

"Odd how every time Trump suggests he might leave Syria or back off, Assad (who would love the US out) suddenly inexplicably uses chemical weapons and screws himself. How convenient for the players who are desperate to get the US more deeply involved," freelance journalist Danielle Ryan tweeted. 

Other commentators online also argued that the reports of a chemical attack were actually aimed at dragging the US deeper into the Syrian conflict.