The Pentagon hopes an ISIS chemical weapons engineer captured in Iraq last month will lead US troops to possible weapons sites and help prevent chemical attacks by the Islamic State.
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Earlier on Wednesday Kurdish officials in Syria’s Kirkuk province said IS forces used an unidentified chemical weapon in an attack on the village of Taza. Cook said the suspect revealed details on IS chemical weapons facilities and production, as well as the people involved.
Mr.al-Afari was captured last month, shortly after the arrival in Iraq of a new Special Operations force that is made up primarily of Delta Force commandos.
Airstrikes are targeting laboratories and equipment, and further special forces raids targeting chemical weapons experts are planned, the intelligence officials said.
Unnamed U.S. defense sources told the New York Times Afari was being held in Irbil, a Kurdish stronghold in northern Iraq.
“We feel good about the damage we’ve done to the program”, he said. One U.S. official said the goal is to locate, target and carry out strikes that will result in the destruction of ISIS’s entire chemical weapons enterprise – mainly mustard agent ISIS produces itself.
Two Iraqi intelligence officials identified the man as Sleiman Daoud al-Afari, who worked for Saddam Hussein’s now-dissolved Military Industrialization Authority where he specialized in chemical and biological weapons.
IS has been making a determined effort to develop chemical weapons, Iraqi and American officials have said.
The officials, who both have first-hand knowledge of the individual and of the IS chemical program, spoke on condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to talk to the media.
The weaponised mustard gas that IS has developed would not be concentrated enough to kill, but could badly wound its victims, a defence official told The Times. Intelligence and surveillance of the targets had indicated in some Iraqi locations that civilians were present at prospective sites, officials told CNN.
It was unclear how the Islamic State obtained sulfur mustard, a banned substance with a narrow chemical warfare application.
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IS, a fundamentalist Sunni Muslim group also known as Daesh, is notorious for its brutal methods in gaining territory in Iraq and Syria.
