Paris, June 4 (Reuters): France said today it was certain that the nerve agent sarin had been used in Syria on several occasions following tests it carried out on samples recovered from the country.

“These tests show the presence of sarin in various samples in our possession,” foreign minister Laurent Fabius said in a statement, adding that the test results had been handed to the UN. “France is certain that sarin gas was used several times in Syria in limited areas.”

UN investigators today said they had “reasonable grounds” to believe that limited amounts of chemical weapons had been used in Syria in a conflict where brutality was now a tactic of war. France has been testing samples of suspected chemical weapon elements for several weeks.