Iraqi army
Photo: AFP
US expects ISIS to wield chemical weapons in Mosul fight
US forces have begun to regularly collect shell fragments to test for possible chemical agents, given ISIS's recent use of mustard agent; fears that 1 million civilians in Mosul will be human shields.
WASHINGTON — The United States expects ISIS to use crude chemical weapons as it tries to repel an Iraqi-led offensive on the city of Mosul, US officials say, although adding that the group's technical ability to develop such weapons is highly limited.
US forces have begun to regularly collect shell fragments to test for possible chemical agents, given ISIS's use of mustard agent in the months before Monday's launch of the Mosul offensive, one official said.
In a previously undisclosed incident, US forces confirmed the presence of a sulfur mustard agent on ISIS munitions fragments on October 5, a second official said. ISIS had targeted local forces, not US or coalition troops.
Mosul region (Photo: AFP)
US officials do not believe ISIS 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.
Suburb of Mosul (Photo: AP)
Sulfur mustard agents can cause blistering on exposed skin and lungs. At low doses, however, that would not be deadly.
Roughly 5,000 US 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.
Fighting in Mosul
"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 ISIS militants to use Mosul residents as human shields and lent his voice to concerns about the dangers of chemical agents.
ISIS tunnel outside of Mosul (Photo: AP)
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 20 to 50 km from the city itself, and US officials believe that ISIS is most likely to use chemical weapons later in the campaign, in what could be a difficult, protracted battle.
The leader of ISIS 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 ISIS's best fighters are in Mosul.
