U.S. expects Islamic State to wield chemical weapons in Mosul fight

The United States expects Islamic State to use crude chemical weapons as it tries to repel an Iraqi-led offensive on the city of Mosul, U.S. officials say, although adding that the group's technical ability to develop such weapons is highly limited.

U.S. forces have begun to regularly collect shell fragments to test for possible chemical agents, given Islamic State's use of mustard agent in the months before Monday's launch of the Mosul offensive, one official said.

In a previously undisclosed incident, U.S. forces confirmed the presence of a sulfur mustard agent on Islamic State munition fragments on Oct. 5, a second official said. The Islamic State had targeted local forces, not U.S. or coalition troops.

"Given ISIL's reprehensible behavior and flagrant disregard for international standards and norms, this event is not surprising," the second official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity, and using an acronym for Islamic State.

U.S. officials do not believe Islamic State has been successful so far at developing chemical weapons with particularly lethal effects, meaning that conventional weapons are still the most dangerous threat for advancing Iraqi and Kurdish forces - and any foreign advisers who get close enough.

Sulfur mustard agents can cause blistering on exposed skin and lungs. At low doses, however, that would not be deadly.

Roughly 5,000 U.S. forces are in Iraq. More than 100 of them are embedded with Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces involved with the Mosul offensive, advising commanders and helping them ensure coalition air power hits the right targets, officials said. Still, those forces are not at the front lines, they added.

HUMAN SHIELDS

The fall of Mosul would signal the defeat of the ultra-hardline Sunni jihadists in Iraq but could also lead to land grabs and sectarian bloodletting between groups that fought one another after the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

U.S. President Barack Obama estimated on Thursday that perhaps 1 million civilians were still in Mosul, creating a challenge for Iraq and its Western backers trying to expel the group through force.

"If we aren't successful in helping ordinary people as they're fleeing from ISIL, then that makes us vulnerable to seeing ISIL return," Obama told reporters in Washington.

The International Organization for Migration’s Iraq chief, Thomas Weiss, said on Tuesday he expected Islamic State militants to use Mosul residents as human shields and lent his voice to concerns about the dangers of chemical agents.

The IOM had not managed to procure many gas masks yet, despite those risks, Weiss said from Baghdad.

"We also fear, and there has been some evidence that ISIL might be using chemical weapons. Children, the elderly, disabled, will be particularly vulnerable,” Weiss said.

Attacking Iraqi forces are still 12 to 30 miles (20 to 50 km) from the city itself and U.S. officials believe that Islamic State is most likely to use chemical weapons later in the campaign, in what could be a difficult, protracted battle.

The leader of Islamic State was reported to be among thousands of hardline militants still in the city, suggesting the group would go to great lengths to repel the coalition.

American officials believe some of Islamic State's best fighters are in Mosul.

Source: Reuters

US quizzes 'Islamic State chemical arms expert' in Iraq

The man was once a specialist in chemical and biological weapons for Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader overthrown by the US invasion in 2003, Iraqi and US sources told US media.

Named as Sleiman Daoud al-Afari, he was seized by US special forces last month.

The US special forces are part of a more aggressive strategy against IS.

The man has already told interrogators how IS loaded mustard gas into shells, US sources told the New York Times.

Last month, sources at the global chemical watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), announced that sulphur mustard had been used last year in an attack on Kurdish forces in Iraq blamed on IS.

If confirmed, it would be the first known use of chemical weapons in Iraq since the fall of Saddam.
'Red Cross visit'

Mr Afari was identified as a former employee of the Military Industrialisation Authority, which functioned under Saddam, who used poison gas against Iraq's Kurdish community in the 1980s.

Unnamed US defence sources told the New York Times Mr Afari was being held in Irbil, a Kurdish stronghold in northern Iraq.

He is being questioned about IS plans to use mustard gas, which is banned under international law, in Iraq and Syria, the paper says.

The alleged IS weapons expert reportedly gave his captors details of how the group had weaponised mustard gas into powdered form and loaded it into artillery shells.

One defence official quoted by the paper said the gas was not concentrated enough to kill anyone but that it could maim people.

Mustard gas, which is liquid at ambient temperature, is a powerful irritant and blistering agent which causes severe damage to the skin, eyes and respiratory system and internal organs.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) visited the prisoner after it was notified of his capture by US officials, the paper adds. No details were given.

Two unnamed Iraqi intelligence sources quoted by the Associated Press news agency described Mr Afari as the head of the IS unit trying to develop chemical weapons.

US officials announced last week that a US commando force recently deployed in Iraq had captured an IS leader without giving his name.

IS, a fundamentalist Sunni Muslim group also known as Daesh, is notorious for its brutal methods in gaining territory in Iraq and Syria.

It claimed a number of devastating gun and bomb attacks outside the region in 2015, notably the attacks on Paris and downing of a Russian airliner over Egypt.

Last week, the UK's national head of counter-terrorism policing, Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, warned that IS might be planning a "spectacular" attack in the UK.

Source: BBC