Kurdish forces say Islamic State group used chemical weapons

Islamic State fighters recently fired mortar shells believed to have been filled with a chemical substance, possibly chlorine, at Kurdish troops close to the Iraqi town of Sinjar, wounding 30 fighters, a Kurdish military officer and a medical official says.

Nine Kurdish soldiers, known as peshmerga, were admitted to Azadi Teaching Hospital in the city of Dohuk last Friday with symptoms including vomiting, nausea, shortness of breath and itching, the director of the hospital, Dr. Afrasiab Mussa Yones, tells The Associated Press.

He says that the symptoms suggested that chlorine had been used, but that further analysis was needed. Yones says he would send samples taken from the soldiers’ clothes for analysis.

All the peshmerga were discharged after treatment.

“One of the mortar rounds landed near my position and there was a lot of smoke,” says Col. Lukhman Kulli Ibrahim of the 8th Peshmerga brigade based in Sinjar. He says he “fell down immediately and went unconscious.” He says that after coming to, “I felt burning in my eyes, I struggled to breathe, had a headache and a burning in my chest.”

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons confirmed earlier this week that IS used mustard gas on Kurdish forces last August.

Chlorine is an easily obtainable chemical element that is widely used in water purification. It was first used as a weapon in World War I. When it reacts with water in the lungs it forms hydrochloric acid, a potentially lethal irritant.

— AP