Suspected ISIS attack with deadly mustard gas on Kurdish town in Iraq investigated by US

ISIS are suspected of deploying a lethal chemical weapon against Kurdish forces near a town in northern Iraq.

Militants fighting against the terrorist group reported suffering breathing difficulties after the attack on Tuesday - a telltale sign of exposure to a chemical weapon, German officials said.

The US is now investigating after the White House's National Security Council confirmed it was taking the allegations 'very seriously'.

Officials in the US are said to believe jihadists used mustard gas - which may have come from stockpiles of banned poisons that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was forced to get rid of in 2013.

The attack came on Tuesday when Kurdish forces - known as Peshmerga - were attacked near the town of Makhmour, not far from Irbil.

German military, which has been training the Kurds in the area, said some 60 Kurdish fighters had 'suffered injuries to their throats consistent with a chemical attack while fighting Islamic State', according to the Wall Street Journal.  

We have indications that there was an attack with chemical weapons'  a German Defense Ministry spokesman said.

But a Peshmerga official, speaking on condition of anonymity, suggested the attack used chlorine gas.

'Last Tuesday afternoon, Peshmerga forces in the Makhmur area 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of the city of Arbil were attacked with Katyusha rockets filled with chlorine,' the official said.

Germany has been supporting Peshmerga fighters since September in their push against ISIS jihadists, and currently has about 90 personnel on the ground.

But the spokesman stressed that no German soldiers had been injured.

'The protection of our soldiers in northern Iraq is already at the highest level,' he insisted.

'American and Iraqi specialists from Baghdad are on their way to find out what happened', he added. 

For its part, the Pentagon said Thursday it is 'seeking additional information' about the alleged attack.

'We continue to take these and all allegations of chemical weapons use very seriously,' said Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis. 

The allegations, deemed 'plausible' by US officials, follow claims made in March by the autonomous Kurdish government which said it had evidence that the jihadist group used chlorine in a car bomb attack on January 23.

The Syrian Kurdish militia also said Islamic State had fired 'makeshift chemical projectiles' on June 28 at an area in the city of Hasaka and at Kurdish positions south of the town of Tel Brak to the northeast of Hasaka city.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that reports on the war using an activist network on the ground, confirmed it had also documented the use of poison gas by ISIS in Tel Brak.

It said 12 fighters had been exposed to the gas although none had died as they were quickly taken to hospital. 

Kurdish forces also claim to have captured industrial grade gas masks in the last four weeks from ISIS fighters, 'confirming that they are prepared and equipped for chemical warfare along this sector of the front'.

It said soldiers exposed to the gas 'experienced burning of the throat, eyes and nose, combined with severe headaches, muscle pain and impaired concentration and mobility'.

'Prolonged exposure to the chemicals also caused vomiting,' it added.

Confirmation of chemical weapons use by ISIS would mark a dramatic turn in American-led effort to rout the extremist group from the roughly one-third of Iraq and Syria that it controls.

Although the US and its coalition partners are mounting airstrikes against Islamic State, they are relying on local forces like the Kurds, the Iraqi military and others to do the fighting against the terrorists on the ground. 

The ultra-radical group has seized wide areas of both countries, declaring them part of a cross-border 'caliphate' claiming to rule all Muslims.

Obama says deeply concerned about Islamic State threat

Alistair Baskey, a spokesman for the White House's National Security Council, said they would be looking closely at the allegations made against the jihadists which had been accused of using such weapons before.

'We continue to monitor these reports closely, and would further stress that any use of chemicals or biological material as a weapon is completely inconsistent with international standards and norms regarding such capabilities,' Baskey said in a statement.

At the United Nations, Ambassador Samantha Power said the US was speaking with the forces on the ground who had made the allegations to gather more information.

She said that if reports of chemical weapons are true, they would further prove that what ISIS calls warfare is really 'just systematic attacks on civilians who don't accord to their particularly perverse world view.'

'I think we will have to again move forward on these allegations, get whatever evidence we can,' Ms Power said.

As a result of earlier chemical weapons use by the Syrian government, the US and its partners now have advanced forensic systems to analyze chemical weapons attacks. 

source: dailymail uk