UK minister warns IS plotting chemical attack in Europe

A top British minister warned over the weekend that the radical Islamic State group has “aspirations” to launch a “mass-casualty” chemical weapons attack in Europe.

Ben Wallace, Britain’s minister of state for security, said in an interview with The Sunday Times that while there is currently no intelligence of a planned attack, IS has “no moral objection to using chemical weapons against populations, and if they could, they would in this country.”

He added that “the casualty figures that could be involved would be everybody’s worst fear.”

Wallace also noted in the interview that “the ambition of IS” is to “harm as many people as possible and terrorize as many people as possible” and that a chemical attack would be one of the most efficient methods of accomplishing that goal.

As proof of IS’s “aspirations” to carry out a chemical weapons attack in Europe, Wallace pointed to recent reports that the terror group has used chemical weapons on dozens of occasions in Iraq and Syria, as well as to a December report by Europol — the European Union’s law enforcement agency — to the effect that IS could carry out chemical weapons attacks in Europe.

Wallace also highlighted the breaking up of an IS cell in Morocco in February as further evidence of the group’s intentions. In that case, Moroccan authorities “recovered toxic chemical and biological substances and a large stock of fertilizer. The substances found could have been used to produce homemade explosives and could have been transformed into a deadly toxin.”

With IS continuing to lose its strongholds in Iraq and Syria, the group will pose an even greater threat to the UK, as British nationals fighting with the group “will probably want to come home” and may carry out terror attacks, Wallace warned. He added that “there will also be those people who wanted to go out there but no longer can get there. Their frustration may boil over.”

British intelligence services estimate that around 800 British citizens have gone to fight with IS in Iraq and Syria, with around half having returned to the UK, according to The Sunday Times, while another 100 are believed to have been killed.

Analysts and intelligence agencies believe that IS has an arsenal of mustard gas, which it has been able to produce on its own thanks to the assistance of former Saddam Hussein-era chemical weapons experts working on behalf of the group.