The rocket fell on Tuesday in an unpopulated area near the Qayyara West base, where hundreds of USA forces are working to prepare an airfield ahead of Iraq’s offensive to retake the city of Mosul from ISIL, said the official, who spoke with Pentagon reporters on condition of anonymity.
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“We assess it to be a sulfur mustard blister agent”, Dunford said at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
In the past, when investigating chemical weapon attacks, US forces have conducted a preliminary investigation of the weapon in the field before sending it for extensive lab testing and analysis.
The statement added that Iraqi forces were pushing forward to the city centre.
The military has requested approval to send 500 more troops to Iraq to assist in missions to retake Mosul from the Islamic State. There were no USA casualties, Davis said, and the shell, “likely a rocket or mortar, was imprecise and crude”.
“As Daesh [ISIS] loses ground, they are becoming more desperate and, as a result, we have seen an increase in chemical attacks across Kurdistan”, Iraq’s Kurdish Gen. Yassin told Breitbart News in June.
“It wasn’t particularly effective but it was a concerning development”, Dunford said of the attack on the Qayyarah airfield.
The group also controls the city of Tel Afar, west of Mosul towards the Syrian border.
The attempted attack took place Tuesday when ISIS fired a rocket into Qayyarah air base, located in northern Iraq.
According to officials, no troops were injured in the attempt.
A top Iraqi general said in a phone interview that Islamic State has tried to use “expired” chemical weapons against his nation’s troops before with “no real impact on our forces”. An initial test for the agent was positive, but “could be false”, the official said.
The Islamic State (ISIS) militants were caught flatfooted.
The official called the potential chemical weapons attack “not surprising”, and in line with the things ISIS has been doing to try to “harass us and frighten us”.
The attack came from a powdered mustard agent delivered in a mortar or rocket shell and fired on United States forces on Tuesday at the Qayyarah West air base near Mosul.
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Backed by USA -led coalition airstrikes and paramilitary forces, Iraqi government troops on Thursday pushed Islamic State militants from a key town north of the Iraqi capital, days after starting an operation to retake it, a military spokesman said.
