By Marwan Makdesi and Dominic Evans, Reuters
DAMASCUS—A team of United Nations chemical weapons experts arrived in Damascus on Sunday to investigate the possible use of chemical weapons in Syria’s civil war.
President Bashar al-Assad’s government and the rebels fighting him have accused each other of using chemical weapons, a step which the United States had said would cross a “red line” in a conflict which has killed 100,000 people.
Like the broader Syrian conflict, the issue of chemical weapons has divided world powers. Washington said in June it believed Assad’s forces have used them on a small scale, while in July Moscow said rebels fired sarin gas near Aleppo in March.
The U.N. team, including weapons experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, will try to establish only whether chemical weapons including sarin and other toxic nerve agents were used, not who used them.
The 20-member team declined to comment to reporters as they checked into a hotel in central Damascus.









