The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had no information about the reports.
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BEIRUT, June 16 (Reuters) - Syrian state media said on Thursday rebels had used "poisonous substances" against government troops east of Damascus on Wednesday, without specifying the type of chemical used.
The spokesman for Jaish al Islam, a dominant rebel faction in the area, said the government was lying.
"Terrorist organizations yesterday attacked a Syrian army position in Eastern Ghouta, in the Damascus countryside, using poisonous substances which had effects on the nervous system which harmed a number of the troops (causing) suffocation and respiratory problems," said SANA, reporting a military source.
The statement did not say which groups it believed carried out the attack. The Syrian government refers to all factions fighting against it as terrorists.
State media broadcast footage of soldiers wearing oxygen masks struggling to breathe while being given first aid.
"They had difficulty breathing, a feeling of almost paralysis and an increase in saliva in the mouth," a Syrian soldier told state television.
Another soldier, interviewed in hospital, said a "smoke bomb" landed and then he started to feel the symptoms.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the Syrian conflict now in its sixth year, said it had no information about the reports.
Jaish al Islam spokesman Islam Alloush said the government was the one with chemical weapons that it had previously used in the Eastern Ghouta.
U.N. investigators established that sarin gas was used in Eastern Ghouta in a 2013 attack. The United States accused Damascus of that attack, which it estimates killed 1,429 people, including at least 426 children. Damascus denied responsibility, and blamed rebels.
Later that year the U.N. and the Syrian government agreed to destroy the state's declared stockpile of chemical weapons, a process completed in January 2016.
(Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Tom Perry; Editing by Dominic Evans)
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