UN
Weapons inspectors returned to the Four Seasons Hotel in Damascus on
Friday after continuing work on their mission to deal with Syria's
chemical weapons stockpile.
International inspectors have so far
visited three sites linked to Syria's chemical weapons program,
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) spokesman
Michael Luhan said on Thursday, as the team races to destroy the
country's stockpile and delivery systems amid a raging civil war.
The inspectors are set to visit more than 20 sites around the country as part of the disarmament mission.
The
facilities they have inspected in the past 10 days have been in
government-held areas, making them fairly easy to reach, Luhan said.
It is the first mission of its kind conducted amid ongoing fighting.
Syria's
conflict, which erupted in March 2011, pits disorganized armed rebels
against forces loyal to the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
At
some point, the 27-member inspection team may have to cross rebel-held
territory to reach other locations linked to Syria's chemical weapons
program. The UN hopes to organize cease-fires between rebels and government forces to ensure safe passage.
Nobel Peace Prize:
The
OPCW won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for working to eliminate the
scourge that has haunted generations from World War I to the
battlefields of Syria.
In this regard, a Syrian official said
awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to the global chemical watchdog
underscores "the credibility" of the Damascus government and its
intentions to destroy its toxic arsenal.
Fayez Sayegh, a lawmaker
and member of President Bashar Assad's ruling Baath party, says the
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons should work to rid
the entire Middle East including Israel of weapons of mass destruction.
Sayegh
told The Associated Press shortly after the Nobel announcement was made
in Oslo on Friday that he hopes the OPCW "wins more Nobel prizes for
peace" in the future.
HRW-UNICEF
Meanwhile, Human Rights
Watch said, in what it calls the first evidence of crimes against
humanity by opposition forces, that Syrian rebels killed at least 190
civilians and took more than 200 hostages during an offensive in Latakia
province in August.
HRW identified five rebel groups instrumental
to funding, organizing, planning and carrying out the Latakia attacks,
including the al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra (Al-Nusra Front) and
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant groups, as well as the Islamist
group Ahrar al-Sham and another unit of foreign jihadi fighters.
Assad's
forces are also accused by rights groups of committing atrocities and
using incendiary and cluster bombs in populated areas. They have carried
out sectarian attacks, including killing up to 450 civilians in two
massacres in mainly Sunni Muslim areas in May, according to U.N.
officials.
For its part, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on
Thursday that child refugees who have fled Syria's civil war are
vulnerable to exploitation including early marriage, domestic violence
and child labor, despite efforts to keep them in school.
More than
one million children, some without parents or close relatives, are
among 2.1 million refugees who have crossed mainly into Jordan, Iraq,
Lebanon and Turkey since March 2011, the agency says.
Jordan hosts
540,000 Syrian refugees, straining health and education services and
already scarce water resources, said Michele Servadei, UNICEF's deputy
representative in Jordan.
Most Syrians live in host communities in the north, while 120,000 are at the teeming Zaatari camp in the Jordanian desert.
On the field:
Syrian
army troops and Shiite fighters loyal to President Bashar al-Assad
captured two southern suburbs of Damascus on Friday, killing at least 70
people, opposition activists said.
The troops, including fighters
from the Lebanon's Hezbollah and other Shiites from Iraq backed by
Syrian army tanks, combed the suburbs of al-Thiabiya and Husseiniya, a
Palestinian refugee camp, after overrunning them, the sources said.
REUTERS/AP