(Source: CGTN)

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad claims the US fabricated last week's chemical weapons attack in Syria -- to justify a military strike on one of its airbases. He made the comments in an exclusive interview with the AFP news agency.

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad says that quite simply Syria did not have chemical weapons, did not use them, and what we saw last Tuesday after the alleged chemical weapon attack was 100 percent fabrication, this has all been concocted by the United States and organisations within Syria working against the government, as an excuse so that the US could carry out a missile attack on that Syrian airbase.

"They fabricated the whole story in order to have a pretext for the attack, It wasn't an attack because of what happened in khan Sheikhoun...It's only few days - two days, 48 hours - between the play and the attacks, and no investigations, no concrete evidence about anything, the only thing were allegations and propaganda, and then strike," Al-Assad said.

He even questioned whether the children were seen in those videos were actually dead. He went on to say that the chemical weapons that were being alleged being used were something that could not happen by the Syrian government, because they did not have chemical weapons. He said they gave up their arsenal a few years ago, referring to the 2013 agreement which led to investigators going into Syria to collect up the chemical weapons stockpiles and destroy them.

This fabrication claim from the president was similar with what we heard from Russia's deputy ambassador to the United Nations.