As major cities in Europe and the United States remain on high alert after terror attacks gripped Paris last week, the Associated Press reported Thursday that the Islamic State group has set up a branch responsible for pursuing chemical weapons, according to Iraqi and US intelligence officials.
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USA intelligence officials don’t think Islamic State has the capability to develop sophisticated weapons such as nerve gas.
The threat was revealed yesterday by France’s prime minister Manuel Valls.
“When I said that we are containing their spread in Iraq and Syria, in fact they control less territory then they did past year and the more we shrink that territory, the less they can pretend that they are somehow a functioning state”, Obama said Monday. French President Francois Hollande referred to Daesh in his statements swearing vengeance for the appalling carnage the ISIS “death cult” inflicted in the City of Lights, and US Secretary of State John Kerry has also used the name in his public statements.
The official said ISIS has a cell dedicated to building these weapons and has already packed the powder form of mustard gas in traditional explosives.
Fighters belonging to the Islamic State group in Anbar, Iraq.
Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said last week that the USA has learned over time that the militants were quickly replacing or repairing damage to oil distribution centers and other infrastructure.
A senior officer in Salahuddin province, north of Baghdad, said 25 percent of the troops deployed there were equipped with masks.
The United States and its coalition partners have targeted ISIS with 8,216 airstrikes – 5,383 in Iraq and 2,833 in Syria, through November 16, the Pentagon says.
They did not reveal further details, including the number of individuals working there, or the team’s budget.
IS has also reportedly attracted chemical experts from overseas, including Chechnya and southeast Asia. The aspiration of the group is to convince the Muslim world that they are the Caliphate – the one true authority binding together all Muslims – which is something that all Muslims save for a very narrow lunatic fringe that no one considers representative of the faith as a whole reject. The month prior, three attacks struck Egypt, and here in the US this past August, a New Jersey man was arrested trying to organize support for ISIS, and on Aug. 8 a newlywed MS couple were arrested on charges that they tried to travel overseas to join ISIS.
How real is the threat of ISIS using chemical weapons against the West? Still, it has been accused of continuing to use chlorine gas, a claim it denies.
Retired Lt. Gen Richard Zahner, a former top military intelligence officer in Iraq, said that while al Qaeda was never able to launch a chemical weapons program, ISIS has greater financial resources.
“Even a few competent scientists and engineers, given the right motivation, can produce hazardous chemicals in limited quantities”, he said.
“It’s only acceptable when the regime or any other group uses chemical warfare against us?” he wrote. A key Iraqi oil refinery also has been taken from the militants. But, he added, what was needed was “to secure a safe environment to carry out experiments”.
The author, Sameer Al Khalifawy, claimed there had been “significant progress”.
They are in laboratories in Mosul and Raqqa, busy with making chemical weapons, Kurdistan Regional Government Intelligence Agency director Lahur Talabani told VOA in an interview. In January, U.S. Central Command announced that an airstrike had killed Abu Mailk, a chemical expert who had worked under Saddah Hussein.
“They’re probably just civilians”, Warren said. The regular Iraqi army, being pieced back together by American military trainers and advisers, lacked the fortitude to take on Sunni extremists who had routed them from Ramadi 10 months ago.
While mustard gas is not as powerful as a nerve agent, in some cases, it can still be fatal.
Yet the Islamic State is still standing and shows no sign of leaving the scene. The Syrian government allowed Iraqi officals to interrogate him in prison but refused to hand him over.
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“The northern access has met with some very stiff resistance, frankly”, Col. Warren said.
