A team of United Nations inspectors have left their Damascus hotel this morning and again headed to the scene of an alleged chemical weapons strike on several suburbs outside the capital last week, a Reuters witness said.
Inspections had been temporarily delayed yesterday for security reasons.
Russia has told UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi that attacking Syria to punish the government for the alleged use of poison gas would destabilise the country and the region, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
The Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told Mr Brahimi that “attempts at a military solution will lead only to the further destabilisation of the situation in (Syria) and the region”, a ministry statement said.
UN Security Council member Russia, a major arms supplier to Dr Assad and his most powerful diplomatic ally in the conflict, says rebels may have carried out the gas attack to provoke outside military intervention.
Options considered
Meanwhile, the British government has said prime minister David Cameron has set out options being considered by the UK in a telephone call to US President Barack Obama last night.
A No 10 spokesman said: “The PM spoke to President Obama last night to further discuss the serious response to last week’s chemical weapons attack in Syria.
“Ahead of today’s [British national security council meeting - NSC], it was an opportunity for the PM to hear the latest US thinking on the issue and to set out the options being considered by the Government.
“Both leaders agreed that all the information available confirmed a chemical weapons attack had taken place, noting that even the Iranian president and Syrian regime had conceded this.
“And they both agreed they were in no doubt that the Assad regime was responsible. Regime forces were carrying out a military operation to regain that area from the opposition at the time, and there is no evidence that the opposition has the capability to deliver such a chemical weapons attack.
“The PM confirmed that the Government had not yet taken a decision on the specific nature of our response, but that it would be legal and specific to the chemical weapons attack.”
In a separate phone conversation yesterday, Mr Lavrov rejected US secretary of state John Kerry’s assertion that the government was to blame.
Mr Lavrov called for a “detailed and in-depth exchange of information” on all alleged use of chemical arms.
Meanwhile, an al Qaeda affiliate has threatened a “Volcano of Revenge” against Syrian government security and military targets in retaliation for a suspected poison attack near Damascus, the SITE Monitoring Group reported late on Tuesday.
A branch of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) said in a statement it would punish Syria for a series of massacres, including last week’s alleged chemical weapons attack, after meeting eight Syrian factions.
“The meeting factions decided to carry out the Volcano of Revenge invasion in response to the regime‘s massacres against our people in Eastern Ghouta, the last of which was the chemical weapons massacre,” SITE quoted the statement, dated August 26th, as saying.
“They have decided to strike the main joints of the regime in imprisoned Damascus, including security branches, support and supply points, training centres, and infrastructure,” it said.
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