Jihadists may have access to chemicals for dirty bomb
LONDON — A former commander of the British army’s chemical and nuclear weapons protection forces has warned that Islamic State has the capability of making battlefield dirty bombs.
It emerged that hundreds of shells filled with poison gas are stored unguarded in areas in Iraq controlled by the jihadists.
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former colonel, issued the warning after it was found that two large stockpiles of shells filled with mustard and sarin gas had not been made secure, either under the American occupation or when Iraqi forces controlled the areas north of Baghdad, before this summer.
Bretton-Gordon said Islamic State (also known as ISIL and ISIS) had shown it was determined to use chemical weapons in Syria and its advance in Iraq had put dangerous material within the group’s grasp.
“These materials are not as secure as we had been led to believe and now pose some significant threat to the coalition in Iraq fighting ISIL,” he said.
“We know that ISIL have researched the use of chemical weapons in Syria for the last two years and worryingly there are already unconfirmed reports that ISIL has used mustard gas as it pursues its offensive against the Kurds in Kobani,” he said. “They certainly have access to the al-Qaida research into chemical weapons and will want to use the legacy weapons in Iraq.”
Islamic State seized the Muthanna State Establishment, where Iraqi chemical agent production was based in the ‘80s, this summer.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that last year, two contaminated bunkers at Muthanna containing cyanide components and sarin gas rockets as well as other shells had not been encased in concrete and made safe. It also reported that another large bunker where U.S. marines found mustard shells in 2008 was overgrown and abandoned.
U.S. Cpl. Jace Klibensk told the newspaper: “There were just rounds everywhere.”
Iraqi officials added that an army base near Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, which fell to IS during the same lightning offensive, housed a shipping container “packed with chemical shells.”
All told, the Iraqi government has estimated that about 2,500 chemical shells were stored within IS territory, but it has never admitted that the bunkers had not been put beyond use.
The allegations that Islamic State could access chemical-filled munitions heightens concern over use of the weapons, either in Iraq or Syria.
“If (IS) gained access to the Muthanna bunkers in Fallujah, mustard agent could have been found and used in some capacity in the assault on Kobani,” said the disarmament experts Joe Cirincione and Paul Walker in a report published this week.
The publication of the New York Times investigation followed a report at the weekend by an Israeli research group that IS jihadists appeared to have already used chemical weapons against their Kurdish enemies.
The Global Research in International Affairs Center cited evidence that the group may have captured chemical agents at Muthanna in June and used them in July to kill Kurdish fighters near Kobani with mustard gas or a similar blistering chemical.
Jonathan Spyer, the author of the report, used photographs provided by Kurds in Kobani to suggest that “on at least one occasion, Islamic State forces did employ some form of chemical agent, acquired from somewhere, against the (Syrian Kurdish forces) in Kobani.”
A State Department spokesman said the American government was investigating the claims.