Three-year-old Iraqi girl Fatima Samir died in a hospital today, the victim of a chemical weapons attack by ISIS against a target in Taza, just south of the city of Kirkuk.
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The attacks caused an unspecified number of casualties from suffocation, burns and dehydration.
Officials in Taza said some 400 residents were exposed to the chemical in the first attack on Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Earlier this week it was reported that elite United States forces had captured the head of ISIS ‘s chemical weapons unit striking a critical blow against the terror group.
The US has acknowledged the use of chemical weapons, including mustard gas, by Isis but is not overtly concerned by their use due to their low potency.
His capture, however, has not stopped alleged chemical attacks by ISIS or other terrorists associated with the Islamist militant group. Hundreds of people reportedly attended Fatima’s funeral, some showing their discontent with the government and calling on authorities to protect the population from IS attacks. It’s not a high threat. “We’re not, frankly, losing too much sleep over it”, Warren said. Several hundred people from the region were forced to flee the region following the chemical attacks, the report adds.
Chemical weapons have been a focus of the anti-Isis coalition efforts for the past two months.
But the troops clashed with the attackers and forces them to blow up their explosive vests, leaving the suicide bombers and one Peshmerga member killed and five troops wounded, a local security source anonymously told Xinhua. The attacks were mostly carried out with homemade bombs placed along roads in the capital’s southern and eastern neighborhoods.
In northern province of Kirkuk, six IS suicide bombers attacked a military base housing Kurdish forces, known as Peshmerga, in Dibis area in northwest of the city of Kirkuk, some 250 km north of Baghdad.
Hamish De Bretton Gordon, a former British army officer and chemical weapons expert, says the use of chemical weapons by IS also appears to be linked to losses on the battlefield.
“As Isis get more and more pushed, we’re seeing them use it more and more often”.
The mustard agent that IS is using is not very toxic, Gordon says, but “it has a huge physiological impact that far outweighs its physical impacts”.
Wais said he was planning to return to the front line against the Islamic State as soon as possible.
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“Now I will fight Daesh more than before, for Fatima”, Mr Wais said.
