Top stories from DAWNS Digest
OPCW Came Under Fire…A team of international experts investigating the alleged use of chlorine bombs in Syria came under attack on Tuesday but all members of the team were safe and returning to base, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said. Syria accused rebel fighters of abducting the members of the joint OPCW/U.N. fact-finding team, who had traveled to the central province of Hama to investigate allegations of illegal chlorine attacks by government forces. The OPCW said “a convoy of OPCW inspectors and United Nations staff that was traveling to a site of an alleged chlorine gas attack” when it came it came under attack. (Reuters http://reut.rs/1ti04qP)
Ebola Strikes Sierra Leone…One month after Ebola killed nearly 200 people in Guinea and Liberia, Sierra Leone has confirmed five deaths from the virus. Five people have died in Sierra Leone’s first confirmed outbreak of Ebola virus, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday, signalling a new expansion of the disease which regional officials said had been brought under control. Ebola, a haemorrhagic fever with a fatality rate of up to 90 percent, is believed to have killed some 185 people in neighbouring Guinea and Liberia since March in the first deadly appearance of the disease in West Africa. Previously, several suspected cases of Ebola were recorded in Sierra Leone early on in the West African outbreak, but they later tested negative for the disease. (Chicago Tribune http://trib.in/1psSdq2)