Pentagon officials believe ISIS used chemical weapons against Kurdish
Peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq Wednesday, Fox News has learned.
One official who had seen the latest intelligence reports from the
region told Fox News Thursday that the victims had "blisters" that
matched the symptoms of other victims of mustard gas. The intelligence
community was continuing to investigate the reports, which were first
made public by the German defense ministry.
This is the first reported incident of ISIS using chemical weapons
since the terror group came to prominence last year. Senior U.S.
officials told The Wall Street Journal
that ISIS may have obtained the mustard gas in Syria, whose Damascus
government admitted to having large stockpiles of the chemical when it
agreed to give up its chemical weapons arsenal in 2013. Another U.S.
official left open the possibility that ISIS had taken the mustard gas
from old weapons stockpiles that belonged to former Iraqi leader Saddam
Hussein and weren't destroyed.
According to the Journal, U.S. intelligence officials believed ISIS
had seized a small amount of mustard gas prior to Wednesday's reported
attack, though that assessment had not been made public. Now, the paper
reports, officials fear that ISIS could discover more hidden caches of
chemical weapons elsewhere in Syria as troops loyal to Bashar al-Assad
lose ground in the country's bloody civil war.
On Thursday, Alistair Baskey, a spokesman for the White House's
National Security Council, said the U.S. is taking the allegations "very
seriously" and seeking more information about what happened. He noted
that IS had been accused of using such weapons before.
"We continue to monitor these reports closely, and would further
stress that any use of chemicals or biological material as a weapon is
completely inconsistent with international standards and norms regarding
such capabilities," Baskey said in a statement.
Earlier Thursday, Kurdish officials said their forces, known as
peshmerga, were attacked the day before near the town of Makhmour, not
far from Irbil. Germany's military has been training the Kurds in the
area, and the German Defense Ministry said some 60 Kurdish fighters had
suffered breathing difficulties from the attack — a telltale sign of
chemical weapons use. But neither Germany nor the Kurds specified which
type of chemical weapons may have been used.
Although the U.S. and its coalition partners are mounting airstrikes
against ISIS in an effort to dislodge it from territory seized in Iraq
and Syria, they are relying on local forces like the Kurds, the Iraqi
military and others to do the fighting on the ground.
Mustard gas, which was first used in World War I, is only deadly in
large quantities. However, exposure to it can cause painful burns and
blisters, and even immobilize those affected. The Journal reported that
U.S. intelligence officials do not believe ISIS fighters have obtained
either sarin or VX gas, both of which are far deadlier.
At the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said the U.S.
was speaking with the Kurds who had made the allegations to gather more
information. She said that if reports of chemical weapons are true, they
would further prove that what IS calls warfare is really "just
systematic attacks on civilians who don't accord to their particularly
perverse world view."
"I think we will have to again move forward on these allegations, get whatever evidence we can," Power said.
She added that as a result of earlier chemical weapons use by the
Syrian government, the U.S. and its partners now have advanced forensic
systems to analyze chemical weapons attacks. She said anyone responsible
should be held accountable.
Similar reports of chemical weapons use by ISIS had surfaced in July.
Intelligence agencies have also stated that they believe ISIS used
chlorine gas as part of attacks in Iraq.
Following a chemical weapon attack on a suburb of the Syrian capital
of Damascus in 2014 that killed hundreds of civilians, the U.S. and
Russia mounted a diplomatic effort that resulted in Syrian President
Bashar Assad's government agreeing to the destruction or removal of its
chemical weapons stockpiles. But there have been numerous reports of
chemical weapons use in Syria since then — especially chlorine-filled
barrel bombs. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,
the global chemical weapons watchdog, has been investigating possible
undeclared chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria.
Word of the White House's probe into possible chemical weapons use by
ISIS came as President Barack Obama was vacationing with his family in
Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. Also on Thursday, IS militants
claimed responsibility for a truck bombing at a Baghdad market that
killed 67 people in one of the deadliest single attacks there since the
Iraq War.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/08/14/us-officials-investigating-if-isis-used-chemical-weapons-against-kurdish-forces/
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