ISIS Reportedly Deploys Chemical Weapons Against Kurds

Since October and the battle over Kobane, Kurdish fighters have repeatedly accused Islamic State of deploying chemical weaponry, chlorine gas in particular, but no concrete evidence of the use of such weapons has been available. At least, not until this weekend when the Kurdish Regional Security Council released what they say is video showing a truck loaded with canisters dispensing chlorine gas against Peshmerga fighters, many of whom reported nausea after exposure.

When the truck was destroyed by Peshmerga, it released a large cloud of white vapor into the air, and Peshmerga report that they recovered some twenty empty canisters of gas from the remains of the truck. The Security Council said in a statement that soil and clothing samples were taken from the site of a suicide bombing on January 23rd to a laboratory for analysis, where it was discovered that the chlorine used was in a weaponized form. However, this report has not yet been confirmed by other sources. Chlorine has also been used several times in Syria as well.

If the allegation is true, this wouldn’t be the first time the Islamic militant group has used chlorine gas in Iraq; in May 2007 Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists in Iraq detonated three chlorine tankers as makeshift chemical bombs in Anbar province. A few months before that, US forces had raided a bomb factory near Fallujah that was also being used to produce chlorine gas and other crude chemical weaponry. The utilization of chlorine-enhanced explosives became a favored tactic of Al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq. Al Qaeda in Iraq would eventually evolve to become Islamic State.

Worse still is the fact that Islamic State seized the Al-Muthanna chemical weapons development facility last summer during its initial Iraq offensive. Al-Muthanna a facility capable of producing mustard gas and various nerve agents, and held the remaining chemical weapons from the Ba’athist regime stored in two sealed bunkers on site. At this time, it is unclear if any of the weapons were stable enough to be used effectively.