AMSTERDAM/BEIRUT (Reuters) - A team of international experts investigating the alleged use of chlorine bombs in Syria came under attack on Tuesday but all members of the team were safe and returning to base, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said. Syria accused rebel fighters of abducting the members of the joint OPCW/U.N. fact-finding team, who had travelled to the central province of Hama to investigate allegations of illegal chlorine attacks by government forces.
The OPCW said "a convoy of OPCW inspectors and United Nations staff that was travelling to a site of an alleged chlorine gas attack" when it came it came under attack. "All team members are safe and well and are travelling back to the operating base," it said in a statement, without providing further details. President Bashar al-Assad, whose forces have been battling rebels trying to unseat him for more than three years, agreed last year to hand over Syria's entire chemical weapons stockpile after hundreds of people were killed in a sarin gas attack near Damascus.
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