Second Team of Experts on Weapons to Go to Syria BEIRUT, Lebanon - The organization responsible for ensuring the destruction of Syria's arsenal of chemical weapons said Tuesday that it was sending a second team of experts to the country, as the forces of President Bashar al-Assad and rebels seeking his ouster battled over strategic swaths of territory. Louai Beshara/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images United Nations vehicles leaving a hotel in Damascus last week. The new team of experts, expected to reach Damascus on Wednesday, will expand on the work undertaken by the initial team, which arrived on Oct. 1. Both are part of what will grow into an ambitious operation that will identify, sequester and oversee the demolition of Syria's approximately 1,000-ton chemical arsenal over the next eight months. Russian officials and Secretary of State John Kerry have lauded the Syrian government for its cooperation with the preliminary work of the experts, sent by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a group based in The Hague that ensures compliance with the treaty banning them. Syria's government joined that treaty last month after having spent decades amassing an enormous stockpile of the munitions and refusing to acknowledge it possessed them. Syrian state television released a brief video on Tuesday showing the organization's experts at work. The experts oversaw the first destruction of components on Sunday, with the goal of rendering inoperable all of Syria's production, mixing and filling equipment by Nov. 1. "These developments present a constructive beginning for what will nonetheless be a long and difficult process," the organization's director general, Ahmet Uzumcu, said in a statement posted on its Web site. The organization's work in Syria followed a unanimous United Nations Security Council resolution on Sept. 27 aimed at ensuring that the Syrian government complies with the treaty. In a report to the Security Council delivered Monday, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was collaborating with Mr. Uzumcu to provide a total staff of about 100 specialists in Syria to oversee the chemical munitions demolition, which is to be completed by mid-2014. None of the specialists do the actual demolition work, which under the treaty protocol is carried out by Syrian forces. The most difficult task of the specialists, who are operating in a war zone, will be to verify that Syria has destroyed the entire arsenal. International concern over Syria's chemical weapons soared after sarin gas attacks outside Damascus on Aug. 21 that the United States says killed more than 1,400 people. While the Syrian government and the rebels have blamed each other for the attacks, the United States and its allies have accused Mr. Assad's forces, and a United Nations report on the attacks contained forensic details that suggested the government had been responsible. Many in Syria's opposition worry that the international focus on destroying Syria's chemical weapons has drawn attention away from the civil war, in which more than 100,000 people have been killed, most with conventional weapons. "Western countries only worry about chemical weapons because of the safety of Israel and other countries in the region," said Hossam Saloum, an antigovernment activist reach via Skype in the northern town of Khan Sheikhoun. "They said, "We'll get rid of the chemical weapons, and whatever else happens is none of our business," " Mr. Saloum said. In Damascus, Syrian officials speak of getting rid of chemical weapons as being separate from the civil war, in which, they say, they are fighting terrorism. Walid al-Zoubi, a lawmaker in Mr. Assad's Baath Party, was quoted by The Associated Press on Tuesday as saying that chemical weapons "have become a heavy burden on the state" and that Syria no longer needs them. Fighting raged throughout the country on Tuesday. Rebels clashed with government forces near a key supply road to the contested northern city of Aleppo, a route that the government side reopened over the weekend. In Idlib Province, rebels pressed what they said was a new effort to capture a large military base, clashing with government forces, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict from Britain through a network of contacts on the ground. The government fought back with airstrikes, the group said, dropping barrels full of explosives on villages where the rebels sheltered.