15.02.2016, 22:46
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Zitat:Exclusive: Samples confirm Islamic State used mustard gas in Iraq
Zitat:Islamic State militants attacked Kurdish forces in Iraq with mustard gas last year, in the first known use of chemical weapons in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a diplomat said, after tests by the global chemical arms watchdog.
A source at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed that laboratory tests had come back positive for the sulfur mustard, after around 35 Kurdish troops were sickened on the battlefield last August.
The samples were taken after the soldiers became ill during fighting against Islamic State militants southwest of Erbil, capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.
The OPCW already concluded in October that mustard gas was used last year in neighboring Syria. Islamic State has declared a "caliphate" in territory it controls in both Iraq and Syria and does not recognize the frontier.
The matter is expected to be raised at the next meeting of the OPCW's 41-member Executive Council in a month, an official said.
If Islamic State used chemical weapons, experts are still uncertain of how the group might have obtained them, or whether it could have access to more.
Another diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Syria’s stockpile was a possible source of the sulfur mustard used in Iraq. That would mean Damascus had failed to fully disclose its chemical weapons program, which was dismantled under international supervision in 2013-2014, the diplomat said.
"If Syria has indeed given up its chemical weapons to the international community, it is only the part that has been declared to the OPCW and the declaration was obviously incomplete,” the diplomat told Reuters.