BERLIN
Germany has started incinerating Syria’s toxic chemicals at a special site in Munster in the northern state of Lower Saxony, according to local government officials.
Toxic material, which had already been neutralized at the American vessel, Cape Ray, in the Mediterranean in July and August, have been brought to Munster last week for a final incinerating process, the state of Lower Saxony Environment Ministry said in a written statement on Tuesday.
In total, 23 containers carrying the toxic material have been brought to GEKA, the state‑owned company responsible for disposing of chemical warfare agents. Incineration started on Friday,.
“The process will continue about five months. At the end of this process, the remaining two to three tons of salt will be stored at a special site in Thüringen [located in the central part of the country],” the ministry said in its statement.
The intergovernmental Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) experts will monitor the process, it added.
The reported use of chemical weapons in Syria shocked the world a year ago and brought the U.S. to the brink of involvement in the country's civil war.
The UN Security Council decided last year to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons after forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad allegedly killed more than 1,000 people in a sarin gas attack on a Damascus suburb in August.
In early July, they were loaded onto a specially equipped U.S. ship in the Mediterranean, Cape Ray which turned the chemical weapons into chemical waste through hydrolysis, a chemical process in which water is added to a substance. Other facilities in Finland, the United Kingdom, and the United States are also disposing of toxic chemicals from Syria.
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