GENEVA — Syria is likely to miss its year-end deadline for getting its most deadly chemical weapons out of the country despite an international effort to mobilize the resources needed to do so, according to the United Nations and the international monitoring group overseeing the program.
Syria has until mid-2014 to destroy its chemical weapons program under the deal struck by Russia and the United States in September.
To meet that challenging timetable, it agreed with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to remove about 500 tons of its most toxic chemicals by the end of this year and the remaining roughly 700 tons of chemicals in its stockpile by early February.
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"At this stage, transportation of the most critical chemical material before 31 December is unlikely," the United Nations and the chemical weapons group said in a joint statement released Saturday.
They said that volatile security in Syria had "constrained planned movements" and that logistical problems and bad weather had contributed to the delay.
Also Sunday, the Syrian government said it evacuated about 5,000 people from an embattled industrial town near Damascus where Al Qaeda-linked rebels have been battling government troops for more than two weeks, the state news agency said.
Minister for Social Affairs Kinda al-Shammat said the people have been moved to a safe place, and were being offered aid and support.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group, said the death toll from nearly two weeks of government airstrikes on opposition-held areas of the northern city of Aleppo has surpassed 500.