Fragments from the site of an Islamic State attack this month showed the presence of the chemical commonly known as mustard gas, the Pentagon said Friday.
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According to Reuters, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters collected mortar shells near the town of Makhmur in north-central Iraq on August 11.
U.S. Brig. Gen. Kevin Killea, chief of staff for military operations in Iraq and Syria, said the field testing was not conclusive, so final tests are underway to learn the full make-up of chemicals on the fragments.
He added that a definitive assessment has yet to be released, explaining that a presumptive field test is not conclusive.
“We were able to take the fragments from some of those mortar rounds and do a field test… on those fragments, and they showed the presence of HD, or what is known as sulfur mustard”, Killea said.
A few days after the attack near Makhmour, the Kurdish Peshmerga forces brought fragments from the mortar rounds to U.S. forces.
Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein also used weapons such as mustard agent against the Kurds and against Iran.
U.S. officials have expressed persistent concerns about the possibility that IS would locate and use chemical weapons in its ongoing campaign to take control of more territory across Iraq and Syria.
He was not immediately able to say whether any previous testing had supported allegations of chemical weapons use.
U.S. and coalition partners are supporting Iraqi and Kurdish forces on the ground in Iraq, largely through airstrikes and a train and equip program.
Regardless, he said, “we really don’t need another reason to hunt down [the Islamic State] and kill them wherever we can”.
“However, it’s important that any indication of use of a chemical warfare agent purely from our perspective reinforces our position that this is an abhorrent group that will kill indiscriminately without any moral or legal code or restraint”.
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US officials recently suggested IS may have obtained the mustard agent in neighbouring Syria, despite the Syrian government saying that all of its stockpiles of such weapons had been destroyed.
