UN inspectors braved sniper fire Monday to reach the site of a suspected deadly chemical weapons attack near Damascus, as the West weighed possible military action against the Syrian regime.
A defiant President Bashar al-Assad declared any strike by the United States will be doomed to failure,, while Moscow warned of dangerous consequences for the entire region.
A UN spokesman said unidentified snipers shot at the UN team looking into allegations of a poison gas attack in a Damascus suburb last week. After briefly pulling back, the investigators went to a field hospital in the town of Moadamiyet al-Sham where victims were still being treated.