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LequteMan
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After initially balking, Syria agreed on Sunday to allow the inspectors to visit the Ghouta area, a Damascus suburb where hundreds of people were killed last week in an alleged poison gas attack.
U.N. chemical weapons inspectors today successfully entered Ghouta.
The team left the Four Seasons Hotel in central Damascus mid-morning in a convoy of seven vehicles, according to an Associated Press photographer at the scene who witnessed the departure. The team’s first vehicle was in a buffer zone between government and rebel positions when it was “deliberately shot at multiple times by unidentified snipers,” a U.N. statement said.
No one was hurt. Because the car was no longer serviceable, the team returned to government-held territory before returning to Ghouta a short time later.
Video live-streamed from a field hospital showed members of the U.N. Chemical Weapons Investigation Team, dressed in blue helmets and bulletproof vests, examining patients and talking to doctors who had treated some of the victims.
“This is the effect of chemicals,” one man, who appears to be a doctor, is heard explaining to one of the inspectors as he took notes on a clipboard.
The United Nations did not blame the sniper fire on either the government or the rebels, instead urging “all sides...to extend their cooperation so that the team can safely carry out their important work.”
Both the rebels and the government accused one another.
According to the official Syrian government news agency SANA, “armed terrorist groups” had opened fire as the inspectors approached.
But a rebel spokesman, Zaidan al-Saqba, said it was loyalist troops and militiamen who shot at the team.
Syria decided to allow the team access to the site after Obama administration officials began consultations in Washington over how to respond to the incident.
U. S. officials said that the permission came too late and that the attack will be hard to document because five days have passed since the incident happened and that the area has been shelled repeatedly by Syrian forces during that time.
Meanwhile, top military chiefs from several countries gathered today in the Jordanian capital of Amman for a previously scheduled meeting to discuss ways of improving the security of Syria’s neighbors.
The alleged chemical weapons attack, and possible responses to it, are among the topics that are expected to be discussed at the meeting.
The closed-door meeting will take place at an undisclosed location. It includes the chiefs of staff from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan, according to a Jordanian security official quoted by the Associated Press.
