Reuters Syria Conflict blog: Syrian foreign minister says first air strike by Syrian army on Khan Skeikhoun on Tuesday was at 11:30am and targeted arms depot belonging to Nusra Front.

When an arms depot is bombed, there are inevitably secondary explosions of the high explosive munitions.  This produces what is known as a “fireworks display”, as the munitions cook off and launch randomly into the sky and surrounding neighborhoods. Advanced militaries design their depots to limit this, sectioned  by earthen berms to stop the spread.  In this case, the “depot” was a shack. In Russia denies Assad to blame for chemical attack, a 14 year old girl describes her experience of being less than 100 feet from the shack when the bomb hit it. Requoting the NY Times,

“…she saw an aircraft drop a bomb on a one-story building a few dozen yards away. In a telephone interview Tuesday night, she described an explosion like a yellow mushroom cloud that stung her eyes. “It was like a winter fog,” she said.”

A bomb hit the shack, and the only thing that exploded was the bomb itself? Without enough force to knock her off her feet or even dust her up a bit? She remarks on the effect to her eyes. The implausible coincidences:

• The Assad regime identifies the shack as an arms depot.
• The arms depot contains no conventional munitions.
• It just happens to contain chemical weapons.
• The bomb that hit exploded with weak force, as expected of a nerve agent munition.
• The victims exhibit symptoms of nerve agent exposure.
• There has been no evidence that Al Nusra has sarin.
• Contradicting  practical knowledge, the Assad regime implicitly claims that the bomb succeeds in mixing Al Nusra’s presumed sarin precursors instead of dispersing them.

Dear reader, please excuse the repetition. Sometimes, it makes a difference.