Weapons Experts Begin Syrian Mission as Fighting Rages Around the Country
Deadly clashes raged on the edge of Damascus on Wednesday and rival rebel factions battled each other in northern Syria as international chemical weapons inspectors began to secure the sites will they will work.
The fighting underscored the immense security challenge that the dozens of disarmament experts must negotiate as they work amid the civil war to meet tight deadlines for eliminating President Bashar Assad’s estimated 1,000-ton arsenal of chemical weapons.
The inspectors’ mission — endorsed by a U.N. Security Council resolution passed last week — is to scrap Syria’s capacity to manufacture chemical weapons by Nov. 1 and destroy its entire stockpile by mid-2014.
A convoy of SUVs with U.N. markings departed the central Damascus hotel where the team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is staying as the inspectors headed out for their first full day in the country.
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