The Obama administration said Thursday that the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has indeed used chemical weapons against its citizen uprising.
Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said, "The intelligence community estimates that 100 to 150 people have died from detected chemical weapons attacks in Syria to date."
He added that the casualty data is "likely incomplete."
The use of chemical weapons crosses what President Barack Obama has termed a "red line," beyond which he said his administration would alter its policy toward the Syrian situation.
The administration acknowledged the longstanding suspicion that chemical weapons had been deployed to quell the rebel movement seeking to oust Assad.
The statement did not specify the number of times the administration believed such weapons had been deployed.
Without being specific, Rhodes said the Assad regime's actions "have led us to increase the scope and scale of assistance that we provide to the opposition, including direct support" to the rebel military council. Rhodes said those efforts will increase going forward.
Rhodes also said President Obama has made no decision about establishing a no-fly zone over Syria, a move being urged by the rebel council and by a number of Republican U.S. Senators.
The administration had previously been limiting its participation to providing food and medical aid to the rebels, although Obama indicated that all options remained on the table.
Responding to the administration's confirmation of the use of chemical weapons, Senators John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., issued a statement urging Obama to provide the rebels with "lethal assistance," saying such a move is long overdue.
McCain and Graham also called on the president to "rally an international coalition to take military actions to degrade Assad's ability to use airpower and ballistic missiles and to move and resupply his forces around the battlefield by air."
"We cannot afford to delay any longer," the senators added. "Assad is on the offensive with every weapon in his arsenal and with the complete support of his foreign allies. We must take more decisive actions now to turn the tide of the conflict in Syria."
On Thursday, the United Nations revised its death toll figures on the Syrian uprising to more than 90,000 killed as of the end of March, with weekly deaths having escalated to about 5,000.
A Gallup poll released last month showed that a sizable majority of Americans are opposed to U.S. military intervention in the ongoing Syrian civil war.
The poll found that 68 percent of Americans think the U.S. should not use military action to attempt to end the conflict in Syria even if all economic and diplomatic efforts fail. Just 24 percent said the U.S. should use military action.
Gallup noted that there are only modest differences by subgroup in the percentage who say the U.S. should use military action, although Republicans are somewhat more likely than Democrats to support military action.
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