This was later admitted by the USA to have been an error. The casualty toll remains unknown as the USA blocks a United Nations inquiry. Western media do not persue the story.
The plant was under contract with the United Nations to export medicines; a fact that the USA appeared not to know. Half of the country's pharmaceutical supplies were produced in the plant. Tom Carnaffin, a technical manager of the plant in the mid-1990s from the UK, tells The Observer (UK):
"I have intimate knowledge of that factory, and it just does not lend itself to the manufacture of chemical weapons."
