Syria chemical weapons production equipment destroyed

Syria has completed the destruction of its equipment for producing chemical weapons, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said Thursday.

"The government of the Syrian Arab Republic has completed the functional destruction of critical equipment for all of its declared chemical weapons production facilities and mixing/filling plants, rendering them inoperable," the OPCW said on its website. 

The OPCW, which won the Nobel Peace Prize this year, is overseeing the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal under a Russian-American brokered deal in which Damascus agreed to destroy all of its chemical weapons.

Under the disarmament timetable, Syria was due to render unusable all production and chemical weapons filling facilities by Nov. 1 -- a target it has now met. The timetable also calls for the destruction of its entire stockpile by mid-2014.

The OPCW said its teams had inspected 21 out of 23 chemical weapons sites across the country. The other two were too dangerous to inspect, but the chemical equipment they held had already been moved to other sites that experts had visited, it said.

United Nations inspectors were sent to Syria after allegations that the government had carried out a chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21.

The team of inspectors confirmed that an attack took place but has not said who carried out the attack. The Assad regime denies responsibility for the attack, which killed hundreds of people, including many women and children.