Second group of chemical weapons inspectors is heading to Syria

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A wounded Syrian woman walks with her children after airstrikes on a rebel area of the war-torn northern city of Aleppo. (Mohammed al-Khatieb / AFP/ Getty Images)

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Mourners attend a funeral for men killed during battles with members of the Al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. (Mahmud Al-Halabi / AFP/ Getty Images)

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Rebel fighters carry a man’s body at the Aleppo headquarters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria after he was allegedly killed by the AlQaeda-linked group in January. (Medo Halab / AFP/ Getty Images)

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A Syrian man helps an injured resident following an airstrike in Aleppo’s Maadi neighborhood. (Mohammed al-Khatieb / AFP/ Getty Images)

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A Syrian man reacts after an airstrike by government forces on the city of Aleppo. (Mohammed al-Khatieb / AFP/ Getty Images)

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Rebel fighters inside a building during clashes with pro-government forces in the Sheikh al-Said neighborhood of Syria’s northern city of Aleppo. (Medo Halab / AFP/ Getty Images)

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An opposition fighter runs through a hole in a wall to avoid sniper fire by regime forces during clashes in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo. (KARAM AL-MASRI / AFP/Getty Images)

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Opposition fighters open fire from behind a car during fighting in the Salaheddin district of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported fierce fighting in Damascus province between rebels and troops backed by pro-regime militias and fighters from Lebanon’s Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah. (KARAM AL-MASRI / AFP/Getty Images)

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A Syrian rebel aims his weapon during clashes with government forces in the streets near Aleppo international airport in northern Syria. (Stephen J. Boitano / AFP/ Getty Images)

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Rebel fighters duck as they run behind a barricade to avoid being fired at by Syrian government forces in the Old City of Aleppo. (JM Lopez / AFP/ Getty Images)

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A fighter allied with Syrian President Bashar Assad runs across the street after fighting with rebels in the Yarmouk refugee camp in the capital, Damascus. (Anwar Amro / AFP/ Getty Images)

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A fighter of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command, allied with Syrian President Bashar Assad, jumps through the window of a destroyed building in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus. (Anwar Amro / AFP/ Getty Images)

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An opposition fighter runs in front of a sniper curtain in the industrial area of Syria’s eastern town of Deir Ezzor during clashes with government forces. (Abo Shuja / AFP/ Getty Images)

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Free Syrian Army fighters clean their weapons and check ammunition at their base on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria. (Khalil Hamra / Associated Press)

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Syrian government forces patrol the Khaldiyeh district of Syria’s central city of Homs. The Syrian government announced on July 29 the capture of Khaldiyeh, a key rebel district in Homs. (Joseph Eid / AFP/Getty Images)

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A Syrian national flag is waved in Damascus to show support for President Bashar Assad. (Louai Beshara / AFP/Getty Images)

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A rebel fighter takes aim at regime forces in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. (Louai Abo Al-Jod / AFP/Getty Images)

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A man stands near destroyed buildings after reported airstrikes by Syrian government forces in the rebel-held northwestern Syrian province of Idlib. (Abu Amar Al-Taftanaz / AFP/Getty Images)

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Mustafa Abu Bekir, 23, second from left, meets relatives after crossing the Turkish Cilvegozu gate border. Abu Bekir said he was severely wounded by a bomb dropped from a Syrian army warplane while fighting with the Free Syrian Army in Idlib. (Gregorio Borgia / Associated Press)

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A man carries a boy who was severely wounded during heavy fighting between Syrian rebels and troops last year in Idlib. (Rodrigo Abd / Associated Press)

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Syrian President Bashar Assad arrives at a dinner event in Damascus on the last week of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (Virginie Nguyen Hoang / AFP/Getty Images)

By Shashank Bengali

Oct. 8, 2013 6:50 PM PT

WASHINGTON — A second wave of chemical weapons inspectors is heading to war-battered Syria this week as the international effort to disarm President Bashar Assad’s poison gas program races to meet its United Nations-ordered deadlines, officials said Tuesday.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the lead technical agency in the operation, said additional experts will reinforce the 19 inspectors and 16 U.N. logistics and security personnel who started work in Damascus last week on a plan to dismantle, destroy or impound Syria’s toxic stockpiles.

Operating under supervision of the inspectors, Syrian personnel began disabling the arsenal over the weekend, using cutting tools and grinders to ruin or destroy unfilled warheads, bombs and laboratory equipment used to mix precursor chemicals to make lethal nerve gases. The U.N. has set a Nov. 1 deadline for destroying Syria’s ability to produce chemical weapons.

“These developments present a constructive beginning for what will nonetheless be a long and difficult process,” Ahmet Uzumcu, director general of the Netherlands-based chemical weapons organization, said in a statement Tuesday.

Syrian state television broadcast images of the inspectors at work. The video showed two men in protective gear examining what appeared to be a chemical plant at an unidentified site. The pair scrutinized and tagged switches, and peered beneath a row of metal drums like those used to store chemicals.

U.N. officials said the disarmament effort will grow to about 100 experts over the next few months. Under a U.S.-Russian plan endorsed by the Security Council, Syria has until June 30 to eliminate its stockpiles of lethal gases, including mustard, VX and sarin.

But with security arrangements still unclear, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council that only essential personnel will be deployed to Syria “to conduct an operation the likes of which, quite simply, have never been tried before.”

Ban said Syria needs to complete an agreement to guarantee that inspectors can work safely despite the country’s civil war. The fighting has left broad swaths of Syria in ruins and resulted in more than 100,000 dead, according to U.N. estimates.

“Without sustained, genuine commitment by the Syrian authorities, the joint mission will fail in its objectives,” Ban said in a report released late Monday.

Hours before the inspectors’ advance team arrived in Damascus on Oct. 1, two mortar shells struck close to their hotel. “Heavy artillery, airstrikes, mortar barrages and the indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas are commonplace, and battle lines shift quickly,” he said.

Ban said he would appoint a special coordinator to head the mission, and he proposed to base it in the island nation of Cyprus, west of Syria in the Mediterranean Sea. The Cypriot government has agreed to host the base — which would serve as a training center, storage facility and logistics hub — if the 15-member Security Council endorses the plan, he said.

Until now, OPCW and U.N. teams have entered Syria from neighboring Lebanon, often by road because the Damascus airport area has seen clashes between Assad’s forces and rebels battling to overthrow the government. U.N. officials declined to explain why Ban chose to establish the base in Cyprus instead.

“For us the basic issue is finding a place that we can rely on as a good jumping-off point,” said an aide to Ban who wasn’t authorized to be quoted by name. “Cyprus fit that, but any number of places could have been a base.”

The Syrian military, as well as unarmed U.N. guards, are supposed to protect the inspectors as they travel around Syria. But in an interview Monday with Japan’s Kyodo News, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said his government would not guarantee their safety.

“We shall have no responsibility,” Mekdad was quoted as saying. “We tell them in that place there are armed groups, and you have to take measures” to ensure security.

Ban said the U.N. would request technical, logistical and security help from unspecified countries in coming weeks. Germany and Italy provided transportation for the first two teams of inspectors in Syria.

The Obama administration accuses Assad’s forces of firing sarin-loaded rockets into rebel-held suburbs of Damascus on Aug. 21, an attack that Washington says killed more than 1,400 people. Syria denied launching the attack, but agreed to relinquish its chemical stockpiles under international supervision.

The State Department emphasized Tuesday that it has not changed its position that Assad must leave power even though he is cooperating with the disarmament plan.

“We have said repeatedly that the Assad regime must go,” said Marie Harf, a State Department spokeswoman. “If and when there’s a transitional government in place, they will assume responsibility for implementation of the Security Council resolution.”

shashank.bengali@latimes.com

Times staff writer Patrick J. McDonnell in Beirut contributed to this report.