A cemetery on the outskirts of Gaziantep, Turkey. Grave No. 38487 holds the body of a 4-year-old girl who died of wounds she received when a shell containing sulfur mustard agent hit her home in Marea, Syria.
The Islamic State has used chemical weapons, including chlorine and sulfur mustard agents, at least 52 times on the battlefield in Syria and Iraq since it swept to power in 2014, according to a new independent analysis.
More
than one-third of those chemical attacks have come in and around Mosul,
the Islamic State stronghold in northern Iraq, according to the
assessment by the IHS Conflict Monitor, a London-based intelligence
collection and analysis service.
The
IHS conclusions, which are based on local news reports, social media
and Islamic State propaganda, mark the broadest compilation of chemical
attacks in the conflict. American and Iraqi military officials have
expressed growing alarm over the prospect of additional chemical attacks
as the allies press to regain both Mosul and Raqqa, the Islamic State
capital in Syria.
“The
coalition is concerned about ISIL’s use of chemical weapons,” Col. John
Dorrian, a military spokesman in Iraq, said in an email on Monday,
using another name for the Islamic State. “ISIL has used them in Iraq
and Syria in the past, and we expect them to continue employing these
types of weapons.”
Colonel
Dorrian said that the Islamic State’s ability to use chemical weapons
is “rudimentary,” and that American, Iraqi and other allied troops are
equipped to deal with the impact of these chemical attacks — typically
rockets, mortar shells or artillery shells filled with chemical agents.
The effects of these chemical munitions thus far have been limited to
the immediate area where they land.
The
IHS assessment is to be made public on Tuesday. The New York Times
obtained an advance copy of the assessment and the location of the 52
reported chemical attacks. The analysis did not break down the cases by
type of chemical attack.
In
an effort to blunt the Islamic State’s ability to make the weapons, the
American-led air campaign has bombed militants associated with
overseeing their production and the facilities where chemical ordnance
is manufactured. In September, for instance, allied warplanes attacked a
converted pharmaceutical factory in northern Iraq thought to have been a
chemical weapons production facility.
As
Iraqi forces now advance into Mosul, analysts warned that the Islamic
State could unleash more chemical attacks as they cede control. Iraqi
forces have reclaimed about one-third of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest
city.
“As
the Islamic State loses ground around Mosul, there is a high risk of
the group using chemical weapons to slow down and demoralize advancing
enemy forces.” said Columb Strack, a senior analyst and the head of the
IHS Conflict Monitor. “And to potentially make an example of — and take
revenge on — civilian dissidents within the city.”
At
least 19 of the 52 chemical attacks have taken place in and around
Mosul, according to the IHS data, but the assessment noted a decline in
attacks before the Iraqi-led offensive against the city.
“Mosul
was at the center of the Islamic State’s chemical weapons production,”
Mr. Strack said. “But most of the equipment and experts were probably
evacuated to Syria in the weeks and months leading up to the Mosul
offensive, along with convoys of other senior members and their
families.”
The
Islamic State is not the only actor in Syria to carry out chemical
weapons’ strikes: The Syrian government has conducted many more such
attacks.
Syrian military helicopters dropped bombs containing chlorine on civilians in at least two attacks
over the past two years, a special joint investigation of the United
Nations and an international chemical weapons monitor said in August.
Beginning
last year, American officials confirmed the first instances of the
Islamic State using sulfur mustard, a chemical warfare agent, and the
presence of the mustard gas on fragments of ordnance used in attacks by
the group in Syria and Iraq. Laboratory tests, which were also performed
on scraps of clothing from victims, showed the presence of a partly
degraded form of distilled sulfur mustard, an internationally banned
substance that burns a victim’s skin, breathing passages and eyes.
Chemical
warfare agents, broadly condemned and banned by most nations under
international convention, are indiscriminate. They are also difficult to
defend against without specialized equipment, which many of the Islamic
State’s foes in Iraq and Syria lack. The chemical agents are worrisome
as potential terrorist weapons, even though chlorine and blister agents
are typically less lethal than bullets, shrapnel or explosives.
It
was unclear how the Islamic State had obtained sulfur mustard, a banned
substance with a narrow chemical warfare application. Both the former
Hussein government in Iraq and the current government in Syria at one
point possessed chemical warfare programs.
Chlorine
is commercially available as an industrial chemical and has been used
occasionally by bomb makers from Sunni militant groups in Iraq for about
a decade. But it is not known how the Islamic State would have obtained
sulfur mustard, the officials said.
Abandoned
and aging chemical munitions produced by Iraq during its war against
Iran in the 1980s were used in roadside bombs against American forces
during the occupation that followed the 2003 American invasion of Iraq.
But American officials have said the types of ordnance that have been
publicly disclosed so far have not matched known chemical ordnance in
the former Iraqi inventory.
The
attacks have been geographically scattered and have varied in their
delivery systems, suggesting that the Islamic State had access to, and
was experimenting with, different types of rockets and shells configured
to carry chemical warfare agents or toxic industrial chemicals.
One
theory is that the militants were manufacturing a crude mustard agent
themselves, American officials say. Another theory is that the Islamic
State acquired sulfur mustard from undeclared stocks in Syria, either
through capture or by purchasing it from corrupt officials, although
this theory is not widely held by American analysts.
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