BEIRUT (Reuters) - International experts began overseeing the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal on Sunday, said an official from the mission that has averted a U.S. strike but could rob President Bashar al-Assad of his most feared weapon.
The process is being conducted amid a civil war in which 120,000 people have been killed, fragmenting Syria along sectarian and ethnic lines and drawing in Iran and Hezbollah on the side of Assad and his Alawite minority and Arab Sunni powers on the side of the mostly Sunni Muslim rebels.