UN chief Ban Ki-moon has said, the use of chemical weapons in Syria would constitute a crime against humanity and there is no time to lose in investigating an alleged attack which the opposition says killed hundreds.

Ban described reports of the incident near Damascus on Wednesday as very alarming and shocking and urged the regime to allow a United Nations inspection team, already on the ground in Syria, to begin a probe without delay. Footage distributed by activists showing unconscious children, people foaming around the mouth and doctors
apparently administering oxygen to help them breathe has triggered revulsion around the world.

Ban’s comments, at a United Nations event in Seoul, piled more pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after French president Francois Hollande denounced the likely use of chemical weapons.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists and medics on the ground, said air strikes and bombardments had been launched across Damascus
province while fighting raged in the southwest of the capital.

Meanwhile the head of UN’s children’s agency UNICEF, Anthony Lake, said in a statement that the number of children who have fled war-torn Syria hit one million today, while two million kids have been displaced within their homeland’s borders by the conflict.

According to United Nations figures, Children make up half of all refugees from more than two years of conflict in Syria. Most Syrian refugees have found a haven in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt, but they are increasingly fleeing to North Africa and Europe.

The UN’s most recent figures show that some 740,000 Syrian refugees are under the age of 11. According to the UN’s human rights division, about 7,000 of the dead were youngsters.