Syria’s transitional authorities have discovered remnants of former regime leader Bashar Assad’s covert chemical weapons program, including raw materials and munitions resembling those used in deadly attacks during the country’s civil war, according to a Syrian official.

Syrian authorities have also taken into custody 18 suspects for alleged involvement in ⁠Assad's chemical weapons program, including high-level military, political ​and technical officials, said Mohamad ​Katoub, Syria's permanent ⁠representative to ‌the ‌Organisation for ⁠the Prohibition ‌of Chemical ​Weapons (OPCW) in ⁠The Hague, ⁠in an interview.

A joint task force with Türkiye and seven others is working to support Syria to eliminate covert chemical weapons inherited from the ousted Assad regime.

During his time in power, Assad’s forces were widely documented as responsible for hundreds of chemical weapons attacks. Independent investigations and U.N.-linked inquiries estimate over 300 confirmed attacks, primarily involving chlorine and other banned agents, with the vast majority attributed to government forces between 2012 and 2019.

While the Chemical Weapons Convention places the responsibility for destroying such weapons on individual states, due to the ousted Assad regime's covert conduct of its chemical weapons program, its refusal to cooperate with the OPCW, the unknown fate of records pertaining to the chemical weapons program from the former regime's era and the lack of capacity for destruction, a process had been initiated to provide support to Syria from the international community.