Officials say the group has already established a branch dedicated to research with the help of scientists from Iraq and Syria.
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Citing intelligence reports he has access to, he said the group has managed to attract chemical experts from overseas as well as Iraqi experts, including those who once worked for Saddam Hussein’s now-dissolved Military Industrialisation Authority.
USA counter-terrorism experts, some of whom have dealt with Islamic radicalism for decades, cautioned that reducing the ISIS threat will be a long, complicated process – and that more mass casualty attacks in Europe and North America are likely in the meantime.
WE have become familiar with the names ISIS – an abbreviation for “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria”, the shorter IS, or Islamic State, and occasionally ISIL, which stands for “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” to describe the murderous terrorist organization that has seized territory in Iraq and war-torn Syria, and spread its hateful tentacles to distant places like Yemen, Afghanistan, North and Central Africa, and possibly even here in Southeast Asia. The OPCW is continuing to investigate other suspected uses of chemical weapons by ISIS.
An unnamed senior officer in Iraq’s Salahuddin Province also said 25 percent of the troops deployed there were equipped with gas masks.
Additionally, Russian Federation has supplied Iraqi forces with 1,000 protective suits against chemical attacks, Hakim al-Zamili, the head of the Iraqi parliament’s security and defense committee, told AP.
“Daesh [ISIS] is working very seriously to reach production of chemical weapons, particularly nerve gas”, al-Zamili said, using an Arabic acronym for the group. 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 closest traditional English equivalent for al-Sham is “the Levant”, hence the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL.
Western officials, as well as allies in the Middle East, are trying to keep a close watch on what may be an ambitious and growing chemical weapons program by the Islamic State terror group. Biological weapons can include agents like anthrax, cholera, and the plague.
In March, an Egyptian intelligence official told me the Egyptian government provided the USA with information that indicated ISIS is attempting to purchase chemical materials such as chlorine gas that can be utilized in terrorist attacks.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, several Iraqi intelligence officials told The Associated Press on Thursday that Daesh has set up a branch tasked with pursuing the development of chemical weapons.
In it, the deputy, Sameer al-Khalifawy, wrote that chemical weapons would ensure “swift victory” and “terrorize our enemies”.
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“God forbid that they have some sort of advanced chemical weapon; then things could get a lot worse than they are”, he added.
