Tag Archives: Chemical Weapons

Islamic State executes scores, stockpiles chemicals in Mosul

Recently displaced people rush a food distribution point in Khazer refugee camp,

GENEVA, Nov 11 (Reuters) – Islamic State fighters have executed scores more people around Mosul this week and are reportedly stockpiling ammonia and sulphur in civilian areas, possibly for use as chemical weapons, U.N. human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said on Friday.

A mass grave with over 100 bodies found in the town of Hammam al-Alil was one of several Islamic State killing grounds, Shamdasani said, citing information gleaned from sources on the ground including a man who played dead during a mass execution.

Public executions were being carried out for “treason and collaboration” with Iraqi forces trying to recapture the city,
or for the use of banned mobile phones or desertion.

People with explosive belts, possibly teenagers or young boys, were being deployed in the alleys of Old Mosul, while
abducted women were being “distributed” to fighters or told they would be used to accompany Islamic State convoys, she said.

(Reporting by Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay)

Exclusive: Watchdog condemns Syrian government, Islamic State use of banned chemical weapons

car parts to make car bombs

By Anthony Deutsch

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The executive body of the global chemical weapons watchdog voted on Friday to condemn the use of banned toxic agents by the Syrian government and by militant group Islamic State, a source who took part in the closed session said.

Roughly two-thirds of the 41 members on the Executive Council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), endorsed a U.S.-tabled text, the source told Reuters.

The OPCW’s Executive Council, which meets behind closed doors, seldom votes on such matters, generally operating through consensus. But this text was supported by 28 members, including Germany, France, the United States and Britain.

It was opposed by Russia, China, Sudan and Iran. There were nine abstentions. Russia and Iran are Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s main allies against rebels seeking to overthrow him. Western and Gulf Arab states back the rebels.

The U.S.-Russian split over Syria was striking as it was those two countries that in 2013 took the lead in getting the Damascus government to join the OPCW and avert threatened U.S.-led military intervention in Syria’s civil war.

A 13-month international inquiry by the OPCW and United Nations concluded in a series of reports that Syrian government forces, including helicopter squadrons, were responsible for the use of chlorine barrel bombs against civilians.

The OPCW-U.N. mission found that the Syrian government carried out three toxic attacks in March and April of last year, while Islamic State militants had used sulfur mustard gas.

The findings set the stage for a U.N. Security Council showdown between the five veto-wielding powers, likely pitting Russia and China against the United States, Britain and France over how those responsible for the attacks should be held accountable.

Syrian authorities deny having used chemical weapons in the conflict. Islamic State has not commented.

(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

U.S. expects I.S. to wield chemical weapons in Monsol

A fighter of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) holds an ISIL flag and a weapon on a street in the city of Mosul

By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States expects Islamic State to use crude chemical weapons as it tries to repel an Iraqi-led offensive on the city of Mosul, U.S. officials say, although adding that the group’s technical ability to develop such weapons is highly limited.

U.S. forces have begun to regularly collect shell fragments to test for possible chemical agents, given Islamic State’s use of mustard agent in the months before Monday’s launch of the Mosul offensive, one official said.

In a previously undisclosed incident, U.S. forces confirmed the presence of a sulfur mustard agent on Islamic State munition fragments on Oct. 5, a second official said. The Islamic State had targeted local forces, not U.S. or coalition troops.

“Given ISIL’s reprehensible behavior and flagrant disregard for international standards and norms, this event is not surprising,” the second official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity, and using an acronym for Islamic State.

U.S. officials do not believe Islamic State has been successful so far at developing chemical weapons with particularly lethal effects, meaning that conventional weapons are still the most dangerous threat for advancing Iraqi and Kurdish forces – and any foreign advisers who get close enough.

Sulfur mustard agents can cause blistering on exposed skin and lungs. At low doses, however, that would not be deadly.

Roughly 5,000 U.S. forces are in Iraq. More than 100 of them are embedded with Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces involved with the Mosul offensive, advising commanders and helping them ensure coalition air power hits the right targets, officials said. Still, those forces are not at the front lines, they added.

Iraqi security forces advance in Qayara, south of Mosul, to attack Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq

Iraqi security forces advance in Qayara, south of Mosul, to attack Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq, October 18, 2016. REUTERS/Stringer

HUMAN SHIELDS

The fall of Mosul would signal the defeat of the ultra-hardline Sunni jihadists in Iraq but could also lead to land grabs and sectarian bloodletting between groups that fought one another after the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

U.S. President Barack Obama estimated on Thursday that perhaps 1 million civilians were still in Mosul, creating a challenge for Iraq and its Western backers trying to expel the group through force.

“If we aren’t successful in helping ordinary people as they’re fleeing from ISIL, then that makes us vulnerable to seeing ISIL return,” Obama told reporters in Washington.

The International Organization for Migration’s Iraq chief, Thomas Weiss, said on Tuesday he expected Islamic State militants to use Mosul residents as human shields and lent his voice to concerns about the dangers of chemical agents.

The IOM had not managed to procure many gas masks yet, despite those risks, Weiss said from Baghdad.

“We also fear, and there has been some evidence that ISIL might be using chemical weapons. Children, the elderly, disabled, will be particularly vulnerable,” Weiss said.

Attacking Iraqi forces are still 12 to 30 miles (20 to 50 km) from the city itself and U.S. officials believe that Islamic State is most likely to use chemical weapons later in the campaign, in what could be a difficult, protracted battle.

The leader of Islamic State was reported to be among thousands of hardline militants still in the city, suggesting the group would go to great lengths to repel the coalition.

American officials believe some of Islamic State’s best fighters are in Mosul.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Suspected Aleppo chlorine attack chokes dozens, rescue workers

A still image taken on September 7, 2016 from a video posted on social media said to be shot in Aleppo's Al Sukari on September 6, 2016, shows a boy breathing with an oxygen mask inside a hospital, after a suspected chlorine gas attack

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A suspected chlorine gas attack on an opposition-held neighborhood in the Syrian city of Aleppo caused dozens of cases of suffocation on Tuesday, rescue workers and a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Civil Defence, a rescue workers’ organization that operates in rebel-held areas, said government helicopters had dropped barrel bombs containing chlorine on the Sukari neighborhood in eastern Aleppo.

The Syrian government has denied previous accusations it used chemical weapons during the five-year-old civil war. The Syrian army could not be immediately reached for comment on the latest allegations.

The Civil Defence said on its Facebook page that 80 people had suffocated. It reported no deaths. It posted a video showing wheezing children doused in water using oxygen masks to breathe.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks Syrian violence using sources on the ground, said medical sources had reported 70 cases of suffocation.

A United Nations and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons inquiry seen by Reuters last month found that Syrian government forces were responsible for two toxic gas attacks in 2014 and 2015 involving chlorine.

A still image taken on September 7, 2016 from a video posted on social media said to be shot in Aleppo's Al Sukari on September 6, 2016, shows a civil defense member making his way through debris, after a suspected chlorine gas attack,

A still image taken on September 7, 2016 from a video posted on social media said to be shot in Aleppo’s Al Sukari on September 6, 2016, shows a civil defense member making his way through debris, after a suspected chlorine gas attack, Syria. Social Media via Reuters TV

The Civil Defence accused the government of two other suspected chlorine gas attacks in August . The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria said it was investigating an August incident.

“Unimaginable crimes are occurring in Aleppo … pro-government aerial bombardments cause mass civilian casualties,” Commission Chairman Paulo Pinheiro told reporters in Geneva. “In government-held areas, indiscriminate ground shelling (by) armed groups … is also killing scores of civilians,” he added.

Aleppo has been one of the areas hardest hit by escalating violence in recent months after the collapse of a partial truce brokered by the United States and Russia in February.

Government forces put eastern Aleppo under siege on Sunday for a second time since July after advancing against rebels on the city’s outskirts. The city has long been divided between government and opposition areas of control.

The Syrian conflict has killed more than 250,000 people and forced more than 11 million from their homes.

(Reporting by John Davison; additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva.; Editing by Larry King)

Suspected Aleppo chlorine attack chokes dozens, rescue workers

Children play along a street in the rebel-held al-Sheikh Said neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A suspected chlorine gas attack on an opposition-held neighborhood in the Syrian city of Aleppo caused dozens of cases of suffocation on Tuesday, rescue workers and a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Civil Defence, a rescue workers’ organization that operates in rebel-held areas, said government helicopters had dropped barrel bombs containing chlorine on the Sukari neighborhood in eastern Aleppo.

The Syrian government has denied previous accusations it used chemical weapons during the five-year-old civil war. The Syrian army could not be immediately reached for comment on the latest allegations.

The Civil Defence said on its Facebook page that 80 people had suffocated. It reported no deaths. It posted a video showing wheezing children doused in water using oxygen masks to breathe.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks Syrian violence using sources on the ground, said medical sources had reported 70 cases of suffocation.

A United Nations and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons inquiry seen by Reuters last month found that Syrian government forces were responsible for two toxic gas attacks in 2014 and 2015 involving chlorine.

The Civil Defence accused the government of two other suspected chlorine gas attacks in August . The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria said it was investigating an August incident.

“Unimaginable crimes are occurring in Aleppo … pro-government aerial bombardments cause mass civilian casualties,” Commission Chairman Paulo Pinheiro told reporters in Geneva. “In government-held areas, indiscriminate ground shelling (by) armed groups … is also killing scores of civilians,” he added.

Aleppo has been one of the areas hardest hit by escalating violence in recent months after the collapse of a partial truce brokered by the United States and Russia in February.

Government forces put eastern Aleppo under siege on Sunday for a second time since July after advancing against rebels on the city’s outskirts. The city has long been divided between government and opposition areas of control.

The Syrian conflict has killed more than 250,000 people and forced more than 11 million from their homes.

(Reporting by John Davison; additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva.; Editing by Larry King)

Rescuers say toxic gas dropped on Syrian town where Russian helicopter shot down

Video of people affected by chemical attack

By Lisa Barrington

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A Syrian rescue service operating in rebel-held territory said on Tuesday a helicopter dropped containers of toxic gas overnight on a town close to where a Russian military helicopter had been shot down hours earlier.

The opposition Syrian National Coalition (SNC) accused President Bashar al-Assad of being behind the attack. Assad has denied previous accusations of using chemical weapons.

A spokesman for the Syria Civil Defence said 33 people, mostly women and children, were affected by the gas, which they suspect was chlorine, in Saraqeb, in rebel-held Idlib province.

The group, which describes itself as a neutral band of search and rescue volunteers, posted a video on YouTube apparently showing a number of men struggling to breathe and being given oxygen masks by people in civil defense uniforms.

“Medium-sized barrels fell containing toxic gases. The Syrian Civil Defence was not able to determine the type of the gas,” said the spokesman.

The Syrian government and its Russian allies were not immediately available for comment.

Later, state news agency SANA said rebels had fired rockets armed with toxic gas on the government-held old quarter of Aleppo city, killing five people and causing eight breathing difficulties. It gave no further details. Rebels have denied previous accusations of using chemical weapons.

The SNC said of the reported use of poison gas in Saraqeb: “After shelling, besieging and killing civilians and perpetrating war crimes on them, the Assad regime has resorted once again, and in breach of UN resolutions 2118 and 2235, to using chemical substances and toxic gases.

“The daily reality confirms that all the international agreements and previous security council decisions, be they about chemical weapons or otherwise, are meaningless for the Assad regime.”

The Civil Defence spokesman said it was the second time Saraqeb had been hit by toxic gas. The group was aware of around nine suspected chlorine gas incidents across Idlib province since the conflict began, he said.

The U.S. State Department said it was looking into the reported use of chemical weapons in Saraqeb.

“I’m not in a position to confirm the veracity of (the reports),” said spokesman John Kirby. “Certainly, if it’s true, it would be extremely serious.”

Monitors at the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence on all sides in the civil war, said barrel bombs fell on Saraqeb late on Monday, wounding a large number of citizens.

Russia’s defense ministry said a Russian helicopter was shot down near Saraqeb during the day on Monday, killing all five people on board, in the biggest officially acknowledged loss of life for Russian forces since they started operations in Syria.

DENIALS

The helicopter came down roughly mid-way between Aleppo and Russia’s main air base at Hmeimim in the western province of Latakia, near the Mediterranean coast.

Russian air power began supporting Syrian President Bashar al Assad late last year, an intervention which tipped the balance of the war in Assad’s favor, eroding gains the rebels had made that year.

No group has claimed responsibility for downing the Mi-8 military transport helicopter.

Government and opposition forces have both denied using chemical weapons during the five-year-old civil war. Western powers say the government has been responsible for chlorine and other chemical attacks. The government and Russia have accused rebels of using poison gas.

U.N. investigators established that sarin gas was used in Eastern Ghouta in 2013. The United States accused Damascus of that attack, which it estimates killed 1,429 people, including at least 426 children. Damascus denied responsibility, and blamed rebels.

Later that year the United Nations and the Syrian government agreed to destroy the state’s declared stockpile of chemical weapons, a process completed in January 2016.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons confirmed in late 2015 that sulfur mustard, commonly known as mustard gas, had been used for the first time in the conflict, without saying which party in the many sided conflict it thought had used it.

(Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton in Washington; Editing by Samia Nakhoul and Robin Pomeroy)

China urges U.N. ‘back draft resolution on poison gas’

Women, affected by what activists say was a gas attack, receive treatment inside a makeshift hospital in Kfar Zeita village in Hama

BEIJING (Reuters) – China on Thursday urged U.N. Security Council members to back a draft resolution demanding states report when militants are developing chemical weapons in Syria.

Some diplomats have dismissed the proposed resolution as a bid to distract from accusations the Syrian government uses such weapons.

Russia and China circulated a draft resolution to the 15-member body on Wednesday, which Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said could serve as a deterrent to “terrorist” groups such as Islamic State from using chemical weapons.

Islamic State militants are believed to be responsible for sulfur mustard gas attacks in Syria and Iraq last year, the United States has said. Russia has also said it sees a high probability that Islamic State is using chemical weapons.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang called on “all relevant parties to strengthen coordination, cooperate and jointly oppose and punish any party’s move to use chemical weapons”.

“We also hope all parties on the Security Council can support this Russia-China draft resolution,” Lu told reporters at a regular press briefing.

“We resolutely oppose anyone, for whatever purpose, under any circumstances, using chemical weapons,” Lu said.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) concluded in a confidential report that at least two people were exposed to sulfur mustard in Marea, north of Aleppo, in August.

The draft resolution, seen by Reuters, would demand that states, particularly those neighboring Syria, “immediately report any actions by non-State actors to develop, acquire, manufacture, possess, transport, transfer, or use chemical weapons and their means of delivery to the Security Council”.

Some council diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the draft resolution was a ploy by Russia to divert attention from allegations that the Syrian government continued to use chemical weapons. Churkin denied it was a distraction.

Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013 under a deal broker by Moscow and Washington, but the OPCW has since found chlorine has been “systematically and repeatedly” used as a weapon. Government and opposition forces have denied using chlorine.

(Reporting by Michael Martina; editing by Robert Birsel)

France carries out biggest ever attack drill ahead of soccer championships

PARIS (Reuters) – France has staged a mock chemical weapons attack on a soccer “fan zone” as it prepares for the Euro 2016 soccer championships in June, less than a year after Islamist militants killed 130 people in attacks in and around the French capital.

More than a thousand police and firemen took part in the attack response drill in the southern city of Nîmes, the largest ever carried out in France.

The exercise was designed to simulate a chemical attack in a “fan zone”, a closed perimeter area where soccer fans will be able to monitor the competition on giant outdoor screens when not attending matches in one of the 10 stadiums.

A Reuters witness saw dozens of police and military officers taking part in the drill, some of them equipped with gas masks.

French anti-terrorism police arrested a group with Islamist militant ties on Wednesday, suspecting one of them may have been planning another attack in the capital.

“In Nîmes, it was about a chemical or bacteriological threat,” Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve was quoted as saying in daily newspaper 20 minutes.

“We don’t believe there is a genuine risk of this type of attack but we must envisage every hypothesis.”

It will be the third time that France hosted the UEFA European Championship after having been chosen for the 1960 inaugural tournament and the finals in 1984.

(Reporting by Matthias Blamont; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Russia calls for pact against chemical warfare by Islamic State

GENEVA (Reuters) – Russia said on Tuesday there was a growing threat from Islamic State militants waging chemical warfare in the Middle East and called for global negotiations on a new pact to combat what he called “a grave reality of our time”.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the appeal in a speech to the U.N.-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, a now largely moribund forum which clinched a major pact banning chemical weapons in the 1990s.

“However, we still face significant gaps related, in particular, to the use of chemicals for terrorist purposes,” Lavrov told the 65-member-state forum.

“This threat is getting extremely urgent in the light of newly revealed facts of repeated use of not only industrial toxic chemicals but also of full-fledged chemical warfare agents by ISIL (Islamic State) and other terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq,” he said.

Islamic State militants are believed to be responsible for sulfur mustard gas attacks in Syria and Iraq last year, the United States said last month.

A confidential report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) concluded that at least two people were exposed to sulfur mustard in Marea, north of Aleppo, in August.

“It does not leave any doubt that chemical terrorism is emerging not as an abstract threat, but a grave reality of our time which could and should be addressed,” Lavrov said.

“There is a growing danger of similar crimes being committed on the territory of Libya and Yemen,” he said.

Lavrov said there were reports of militant groups gaining access to scientific and technical documentation on the production of chemical weapons, seizing chemical plants and “engaging foreign specialists to help synthesize chemical warfare agents”, without giving details.

He said launching negotiations would revive the Conference on Disarmament, whose members include U.N. Security Council permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, but which has not been able to clinch any disarmament agreements since “the last decade of the 20th Century”.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Officials investigating another suspected case of ISIS using chemical weapons

Officials are investigating if the Islamic State used chemical weapons in a recent attack in Iraq.

The Kurdistan Regional Security Council and officials from the United States-led coalition against the Islamic State are looking into Thursday’s events, the council tweeted on Friday.

According to the council, Islamic State militants used homemade rockets in an attack on the town of Sinjar, which is located about 80 miles west of Mosul in northern Iraq.

Dozens of civilians and Peshmerga military forces subsequently vomited, experienced nausea or had trouble breathing and received treatment, the council tweeted. It did not say if anyone died.

Officials did not specify which chemical the Islamic State is believed to have used in the attack.

If the investigation does confirm a chemical weapon was used, the council said it would be the eighth time that the Islamic State used the substances in their attacks against Peshmerga forces.

The council tweeted last March that it believed the Islamic State used chlorine in a car bomb attack in Iraq in January 2015, saying soil and clothing samples contained evidence of its use.

The council has also tweeted it has evidence the Islamic State used mustard gas in prior attacks, saying some 35 Peshmerga forces were exposed during an August 2015 shelling near Erbil, Iraq.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has also said it was concerned about chlorine gas being used in various attacks in Syrian villages in 2014.

An OPCW fact-finding mission into the attacks in Syria did not address who used the chlorine.

More than 190 countries have agreed to a 1997 United Nations treaty on chemical weapons, which prohibits their use or production and calls for nations to destroy their existing arsenals.