Video: Clean-up crew enters Saudi consulate ahead of Khashoggi investigators

Saudi authorities have let a team of cleaners enter its Istanbul consulate hours before a investigators began a joint inspection of the building where journalist Jamal Khashoggi vanished.

Official Turkish news agency Anadolu reported on Monday that cleaners carrying a large amount of chemical substances entered the consulate at lunchtime.

The move came hours before Saudi Arabia finally allowed Turkish investigators into the consulate nearly two weeks after Khashoggi went missing after entering the Saudi mission to carry out paperwork.

The Saudi Turkish team arrived by unmarked police car and said nothing to journalists waiting outside as international concern continues to grow over the journalist's disappearance.

Until now, Riyadh has not allowed investigators to search the consulate - officially Saudi territory - with reports both sides were at odds over the conditions.

Turkish officials have said they fear a Saudi hit team that flew into and out of Turkey on October 2 killed and dismembered Khashoggi, who had written critically of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The kingdom has called such allegations "baseless" but has not offered any evidence Khashoggi ever left the consulate.

Such a search is an extraordinary development, as embassies and consulates under the Vienna Convention are technically foreign soil.

The Khashoggi controversy has troubled even Saudi Arabia's traditional Western allies - who are key arms suppliers to the kingdom - and also undermined efforts by Crown Prince Mohammed to present himself as a modernising ruler.