DAMASCUS — According to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), all the toxic chemicals removed from Syria under a deal with the Syrian government to destroy its chemical weapons stockpile have been delivered to destruction facilities outside the country.

OPCW said in a statement, Thursday, July 23, that the 1,300 tons of chemicals removed from Syria were now being destroyed at various locations. The watchdog said 32 percent of the total had been destroyed by July 21.

OPCW also announced that the 12 former chemical weapons production facilities in Syria would be placed beyond use. Seven hangars would be razed to the ground, it said, while five underground structures would be sealed off permanently.

A member of UN investigation team taking samples of sand.

The Hague-based organization was given the task of overseeing the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stocks after a sarin gas attack on the outskirts of Damascus last year which killed hundreds of people.

Six hundred tons of the most deadly chemicals are being destroyed using equipment installed on a U.S. vessel, the MV Cape Ray. The remainder are being destroyed at commercial land-based facilities in Finland, Britain and the United States.

The presence of such large quantities of toxic chemicals has caused public alarm and was met with stiff opposition from local politicians and residents in some of the countries participating in the destruction process.

In January, the Italian government was forced to reassure residents near the port of Gioia Tauro, where the chemicals were transloaded, that they were in no danger.

Syria urged a newly appointed international mediator to be “objective and honest” as he seeks an end to the country’s civil war, Syrian state television reported on Wednesday.

It was Damascus’s first reaction to the appointment of Staffan de Mistura by United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon two weeks ago, shortly after President Bashar al-Assad was re-elected in a June 3 poll.

A U.N. official for 30 years, de Mistura replaces Lakhdar Brahimi, who stepped down in May, frustrated by global deadlock over how to resolve the more than three-year conflict.

“We hope that he will take an objective and honest approach based on international law … particularly the respect of the national sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs,” the channel said in a newsflash.

Citing a letter sent to the United Nations by the foreign ministry, it said Syria had also called on Mistura to have “respect for the choices of the Syrian people.”

Mistura, a dual citizen of Italy and Sweden and a former U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan and Iraq, faces a conflict which has killed at least 160,000, displaced millions and enflamed sectarian tensions across the Middle East.

The United Nations sent its first humanitarian aid convoy into rebel-held areas of Syria without government consent on Thursday, as Ban accused warring parties of denying assistance to millions of people in need as a tactic of war.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution 10 days ago that authorized aid access at four border crossings from Turkey, Iraq and Jordan, even though Syria has warned it deems such deliveries incursions into its territory.

“A convoy of nine trucks crossed into Syria today from the Turkish crossing at Bab al-Salam, carrying U.N. food, shelter, water purification and sanitation supplies,” said Amanda Pitt, spokeswoman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

No further details were available on whether the trucks had reached the people it was intended for. In a report to the Security Council, obtained by Reuters on Thursday, Ban said that an estimated 10.8 million people need help, of which 4.7 million are in hard to reach areas of Syria.

He said at least 241,000 people in areas besieged by government or opposition forces.

“The parties have continued to obstruct humanitarian assistance to those most in need and to withhold consent for operations in a completely arbitrary manner as a tactic of war,” Ban said in the report, dated Wednesday.

“I call upon parties to the conflict to lift the sieges immediately and facilitate access to people in need of humanitarian assistance,” he said.