Syrian government forces have reached an agreement with local officials of a vulnerable Sunni village in a region dominated by President Bashar Assad’s Alawite sect to end hours of deadly shelling in exchange for the surrender of dozens of opposition fighters, an activist group said today.

The US, Britain and France have said they believe that the Assad regime was responsible for a chemical weapons attack in Damascus last month.

THE crisis over chemical weapons in Syria has underlined a central dilemma for the West as it tries to deal with the country’s civil war — the lack of attractive alternatives to President Bashar Assad.

The chief of Syrian rebel forces says his fighters are in “desperate” need of weapons and ammunition rather than the food supplies and bandages that the US now plans to provide.

Syrian rebels are closely monitoring the regime’s chemical weapons sites but do not have the means to seize and secure them, their newly elected military commander has told the Associated Press.