DAMASCUS: The Syrian government has asked the United Nations to send its experts to investigate the alleged chemical attack in Idlib province, but the UN has paid no heed to the request due to pressure from US and other western countries, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad said in an interview with Russian media. According to media reports, the Syrian government had sent a letter to the United Nations, asking them to send a delegation to investigate what had happened in Khan Shaykhyn. Assad has said that the UN has not yet sent any experts because the West and the United States are blocking the delegation from coming. The Syrian president has also said that Washington is placing hurdles in the probe because if experts arrived in Idlib, they would find the US narrative about what happened in Idlib to be a lie and a false flag operation. “Now the only contact I think is between Russia and maybe the other countries in order to send that delegation. Till this moment, we didn’t have any positive news regarding any delegation coming,” Assad added. On April 4, an alleged chemical attack killed dozens of people in the town of Khan Shaykhun in Syria’s Idlib province. Without any investigation, the US labeled Assad’s government as perpetrators and fired Tomahawk missiles at Shayrat airbase, which it said was the source of the attack. Russia has called for a thorough investigation including an on-site inspection in the rebel-held territory, before coming to any conclusions. In the interview, Assad said, “Actually, since the first attack a few years ago that happened in Aleppo by the terrorists against our army, we asked the United Nations to send investigation delegation in order to prove what we said about the terrorists having gases used against our army, and later many incidents happened in that way, and they didn’t send any delegation. It’s the same now.” According to the Syrian president, the US strike on Shayrat proved that their own claims of the airbase being the source of the chemicals were wrong as no gas came out of the airport as a result of the destruction of the supposed ‘gas depots’ present there. “None of our army officers or military staff, was affected by any gas,” he said. “So, for us, there was no gas attack and no gas depot, it was a false flag play just to justify the attack on the Shayrat base. That’s what happened,” Assad added.