CNN News:追踪叙利亚内战 化学武器成焦点

We're starting with an update on the civil war in Syria. We've been covering this since 2011 when that war begun. It involves the Syrian government that's fighting to hold to power, rebel groups that are trying to overthrow the government, terrorist groups who are trying to expand their power in Syria. It also involves the United States, which is using Special Forces and airstrikes against terrorists, as well as Russia, which is launching airstrikes in supporting Syria's current government.
Since 2011, more than 250,000 Syrians have died in their nation's civil war and one site of some of the worst fighting and destruction is the Syrian city of Aleppo. It used to be the country's most populated city.
To date, part of it is controlled by government troops, part controlled by rebels, and United Nations officials are trying to figure out if an attack on the rebel-controlled part of Aleppo involved chlorine gas. That's a chemical weapon. Rebels and doctors in the area say at least three people died in an apparent chemical attack.
The Syrian government has been accused of using chemical weapons before in this civil war. The government denies it. But this is significant because chemical weapons are illegal, even in war.
首先我们来关注叙利亚内战的最新进展。叙利亚内战从2011年开始，从那时起我们就一直在关注这一消息。交战各方包括想守住权力的叙利亚政府、想推翻政府的反对派组织和想在叙利亚扩大势力的恐怖组织。另外，美国也牵涉进叙利亚内战中，美国派遣特种部队前往叙利亚，空袭叙利亚境内的恐怖分子，同样介入的还有俄罗斯，俄罗斯在叙利亚开展空袭行动支持叙利亚现任政府。
2011年以来，至今已有超过25万叙利亚人在内战中死亡，其中争斗最严重、破坏最严重的地方是叙利亚城市阿勒颇。那里曾是叙利亚人口最密集的城市。
目前，阿勒颇部分地区由政府军控制，部分地区由反对派控制，联合国官员正在试图查明反对派控制区是否遭遇了氯气袭击。氯气是一种化学武器。反对派和该地区的医生表示，至少有3人在化学袭击中死亡。
此前叙利亚政府曾被指控在内战中使用了化学武器。叙利亚政府否认了这一指控。这个问题非常重要，因为即使在战争中，化学武器也是非法的。

JIM SCIUTTO, cnn CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Chemical weapons are known as the "poor man's atom bomb", because at relatively cost, they could have devastating effect, both in terms of casualties, but also in the sheer horror of the injuries and the sheer fear of contamination.
In the history of warfare, they've been used very seldom. You have to go back to World War II for widespread use, although Saddam Hussein used in the late 1980s, killed some 5,000 people in northern Iraq, in Kurdistan. More recently, the Assad regime has used them repeatedly in the war in Syria. It's estimated, some 1,500 people have been killed, 15,000 injured in chemical weapons attacks in Syria.
The Geneva protocol of 1925 banned the use of chemical weapons in warfare, but not the production. It was until the early 1990s that the Chemical Weapons Convention banned the production and stockpiling as well, and since then, some 90 percent of the world's chemical weapons have been destroyed.
But still, to this day, there's a lot out there in 17 countries still have them from the ones you'd expect, North Korea for instance, which did not sign on to any of those treaties, but also the U.S., although the U.S. has committed never to use them in warfare and is committed to destroy all of them by the 2020s.
cnn首席国家安全记者吉姆·休托：化学武器被称为“穷人的原子弹”，因为就相对成本来说，化学武器不仅可以在伤亡人数上造成毁灭性的后果，还会在受伤恐惧和污染担忧方面造成可怕的后果。
在战争史上，化学武器很少被使用。化学武器的大规模使用还要追溯到第二次世界大战期间，不过上世纪80年代末，萨达姆·侯赛因在伊拉克北部库尔德斯坦地区使用过化学武器，造成约5000人死亡。最近，阿萨德政府在叙利亚战争中反复使用了化学武器。据估计，叙利亚的化学武器袭击造成约1500人死亡，另有1.5万人受伤。
1925年签订的《日内瓦协定书》禁止在战争中使用化学武器，但是并没有禁止生产。直到上世纪90年代早期的《禁止化学武器公约》，才规定禁止化学武器的生产和储存，从那时起，全世界90%的化学武器已经被销毁。
但是直至今日，仍有17个国家拥有大量化学武器，大家能想到的有朝鲜，朝鲜没有签署任何相关条约，拥有化学武器的国家还有美国，不过美国承认永远不在战争中使用化学武器，而且会在2020年前销毁全部化学武器。