Chemical weapons watchdog urges probe in Syria after al-Assad toppled

A man walks on a poster of Bashar al-Assad as a sanitation worker removes it from a downtown street in Damascus after the president's ouster at the weekend [Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters]

The head of the international chemical weapons watchdog says he will ask Syria’s new leaders to grant investigators access to the country to work on identifying perpetrators of attacks that killed and injured thousands of people during the civil war.

Addressing a special session of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Thursday, Fernando Arias said his office had seen positive signals from Syria about the need to rid the country of chemical weapons but no formal request had been received.