The German military confirms a possible chemical weapons attack on Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers fighting the Islamic State group (ISIS) in northern Iraq. The US-led coalition has been providing air support to the Peshmerga, but Washington has refused repeated Kurdish pleas to arm them directly. While U.S. and global forces are trained to deal with the threat, the Peshmerga, Iraqi forces and moderate Syrian rebels may not be, he added.
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There was a “possible chemical weapons attack on the Kurdish frontlines at sector six”, the German defense ministry said.
“We have credible information that the agent used in the attack was mustard”, a senior U.S. official told the Journal.
The group controls large areas of Syria and Iraq.
At the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said the U.S. was speaking with the Kurds who had made the allegations to gather more information. It is also possible that Islamic State obtained the mustard agent in Iraq, officials said, possibly from old stockpiles that belonged to Saddam Hussein and weren’t destroyed.
“Did ISIS find some mustard gas shells?” one official asked. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. “That’s why Islamic State wants to use them”, he said.
Mustard gas was widely used in the First World War and leaves victims with horrifically blistered skin, suffering respiratory problems and can even cause blindness.
A second ministry spokesman later stressed that German forces were not present during the attack, but that “we have indications that there was an attack with chemical weapons”.
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The autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq had asked for worldwide help to determine whether chemical weapons had been used in an attack late Tuesday on the Peshmerga on the Makhmur front, some 35 kilometers (22 miles) southwest of Erbil.
