ISIL Chlorine Attack on Security Forces Confirmed: Iraq Officials


ISIL Chlorine Attack on Security Forces Confirmed: Iraq Officials

TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Eleven Iraqi police officers were taken to hospital after an ISIL chemical weapons attack, with the Defense Ministry and doctors recently confirming the gas as chlorine. This marks the first officially documented militant attack with the chemical.

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants’ chlorine gas attack occurred on September 15, in the town of Duluiyah, located north of the capital, according to a Washington Post report.

The blast followed an exchange of fire between the militants and the members of the Sunni Jabbour tribe, who were guarding the town’s borders.

“It was a strange explosion. We saw yellow smoke in the sky,” said Lt. Khairalla al-Jabbouri, one of the survivors.

The victims talked of the fog that hung close to the ground – a possible indication that it was chlorine, which is heavier than air.

The physicians who treated them also confirmed that their diagnosis was poisoning by chlorine gas, RT reported.

“They were panicked; we were panicked,” said Kasim Hatim, director of the hospital in the nearby city of Balad, where the officers were taken. “We initially thought it might be a more serious gas, a nerve gas or an organophosphate.”

A recent statement from the Iraqi Defense Ministry said that the ISIL had used the gas in a “primitive and ineffective way” – in roadside bomb attacks and near several water treatment plants where it had gained access to chlorine. Without indicating the locations of the attacks, the statement said that the militants aimed at impairing “the morale of the Iraqi people in general and our armed forces in particular.”

 

 

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