UNITED NATIONS, Aug 31: The United Nations on Saturday vehemently rejected suggestions that the world body was somehow stepping aside to allow US air strikes on Syria, saying its humanitarian work in the conflict-ravaged country would continue.

“I have seen all kinds of reporting suggesting that the departure of the chemical weapons team somehow opens a window for military action of some kind,” UN spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters.

“Frankly, that’s grotesque, and it’s also an affront to the more than 1,000 staff, UN staff, who are on the ground in Syria delivering humanitarian aid and who will continue to deliver critical aid,” he said.

UN experts arrived in the Netherlands with evidence gathered in their investigation of a poison gas attack in Syria.

Nesirky repeated that the inspectors would return later to investigate several other alleged poison gas attacks that have taken place in Syria during the country’s 2-1/2-year civil war.

He also responded to US Secretary of State John Kerry’s remarks on Friday that the UN chemical weapons experts cannot provide any information that the United States, which blames Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for last week’s attack that Washington said killed hundreds, does not already have.

“The United Nations mission is uniquely capable of establishing in an impartial and credible manner the facts of any use of chemical weapons based directly on evidence collected on the ground,” he said.

Assad’s government, like Russia, blames the rebels for last week’s alleged chemical weapon attack.—Reuters