United Nations inspectors are reported to have found "clear and convincing evidence" that poison sarin gas was used in an attack near the Syrian capital of Damascus on 21 August.
The conclusion of the report, to be released later today, could be read in a photo posted online by the UN showing Ake Sellstrom, the head of the inspection team, presenting his report yesterday to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The UN team's mandate was solely to determine whether chemical weapons were used, not who used them.
However, a reference to surface-to-surface rockets may point to government use rather than its lesser-armed opposition.
The United States has previously said that President Bashar al-Assad's troops fired chemical weapons in the attack, killing more than 1,400 people.
"Surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin" were used in Moadamiyah in West Ghouta and Ein Tarma and Zamalka in East Ghouta against "civilians including children, on a relatively large scale", according to the excerpt, citing collected "chemical and medical samples".
The French government has said Assad's regime has two models of artillery rockets with a range of about 50km that are aimed at delivering gases including sarin, according to a declassified intelligence report released on 3 September.
The Syrian opposition has "neither the experience, nor the know-how" to use chemical weapons "particularly through vectors as those that were used during the August 21 attack", the French intelligence concluded.
The UN report comes two days after the US and Russia agreed on a plan in Geneva calling on Syria to turn over its chemical weapons to international control for safekeeping and eventual destruction.
US Secretary of State John Kerry secured French and British support today in pursuing a UN Security Council resolution implementing the chemical weapons plan, with the ultimate goal of forcing Mr Assad out of power.
Mr Kerry, British Foreign Secretary William Hague and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who met in Paris today, insisted the Security Council keep alive the threat of an armed response in case Syria backslides on the chemical-disarmament accord.
Russian Foreign Secretary Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow today that any punitive measures for non-compliance by Syria must be authorised through a second Security Council resolution.
Mr Assad's regime has denied using chemical weapons, and Russian President Vladimir Putin continued to blame the 21 August attack on opposition groups in an opinion column last week in the New York Times.
"No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria," Mr Putin wrote.
"But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists."
The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria is investigating 14 alleged attacks with chemical weapons or chemical agents since it began monitoring human rights abuses in the country in September 2011.
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