The United Nations said Monday there is clear evidence that rockets carried sarin gas into a Damascus suburb and that there has been widescale use of chemical arms in the Syrian crisis.

The United Nations said Monday there is clear evidence that rockets carried sarin gas into a Damascus suburb and that there has been widescale use of chemical arms in the Syrian crisis.

UN leader Ban Ki-moon slammed the use of banned poison arms as a war crime and called on the UN Security Council to impose "consequences" to back a Russia-US plan to eliminate the chemical weapons.

Without naming the perpetrator, Ban said an August 21 attack on Damascus suburb of Gouta was "the most signficant" use of chemical weapons since late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein killed thousands in the town of Halabja in 1988.

The experts said they had concluded that "chemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict, also against civilians including children on a relatively large scale."

A UN-mandated independent commission of inquiry into rights violations in the Syria war announced separately on Monday that it was investigating 14 alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria.

The UN experts went to Damascus on August 18 to investigate claims that chemical weapons were used at Khan al-Asal, near Aleppo on March 19 and at Sheik Maqsood and Saraqueb earlier.

The team was told to focus on the Gouta attack. They will return later to investigate the other sites.

Ban called on the Security Council to impose "consequences" for any failure by Syria to keep to a Russia-US plan to destroy Syria's banned chemical arsenal in the next year.

He told the 15-nation council the UN investigators have "now confirmed, unequivocally and objectively that chemical weapons have been used in Syria."
"This is a war crime," he added.

Ban told how doctors treated civilians with no external signs of injuries in the streets of Gouta in the hours after the attack.

"The weather conditions that morning were conducive to maximizing the potential impact," Ban said.

"The downward movement of air would have allowed the gas to easily penetrate the basements and lower levels of buildings and other structures where many people were seeking shelter," Ban said.

A leaked secret document of the U.S. intelligence revealed that militants linked to al Al-Qaeda terrorist organization in Syria have possessed and made poisonous sarin gas in order to carry out chemical attacks in the crisis-hit Arab state.