by Compiled from Wire Services
Mar 09, 2016 12:00 am
The terrorist group Daesh has attacked the Iraqi town of Tuz Khurmatu in the northern Salahuddin province with chemical weapons, the local police chief said Wednesday.
Salah Abbas, the police chief of Tuz Khurmatu, said the town was attacked with mortar and katyusha shells that included chemical gas.
"Daesh attacked Tuz Khurmatu last night from the (nearby) village of Bashiri it seized. More than 40 mortar shells fell on the region over a short period.
"Due to the gas released from the explosion, five townspeople fell unconscious," he added.
Abbas said that following the attack, the town residents are gravely concerned and scared due to the chemical weapons.
Last month, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said Daesh used mustard and chlorine gas in an attack on Kurdish peshmerga forces in 2015.
The village of Bashiri, 5 kilometers from Tuz Khurmatu, has been under the terrorist group's control since 2014 when it overran Mosul.
According to the Associated Press, a U.S. official said Wednesday that one or more follow-up airstrikes were conducted against suspected Daesh chemical facilities in northern Iraq in recent days. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence-related operations, was unfamiliar with details of the airstrikes but indicated that they did not fully eliminate Daesh's suspected chemical threat.
The U.S.-led coalition began targeting Daesh's chemical weapons infrastructure with airstrikes and special operations raids over the past two months, the Iraqi intelligence officials and a Western security official in Baghdad told the AP.
Airstrikes are targeting laboratories and equipment, and further special forces raids targeting chemical weapons experts are planned, the intelligence officials said. They and the Western official also spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Daesh has been making a determined effort to develop chemical weapons, Iraqi and American officials have said. The terrorist group, which emerged out of al-Qaida in Iraq, is believed to have set up a special unit for chemical weapons research, made up of Iraqi scientists from the Saddam-era weapons program as well as foreign experts.
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