The Islamic State group fired chemical weapons against Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq last month, Kurdish fighters and weapons experts said.
The Conflict Armament Research (CAR) group and Sahan Research in a statement on Friday said that the extremist group targeted Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga with a projectile filled with a chemical agent on June 21 or June 22.
The organizations also documented two such attacks against Kurdish fighters from the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria’s northeastern al-Hasakah Governorate on June 28.
The YPG said the attacks targeted the Kurdish-held al-Salehiyah neighborhood of al-Hasakah city and Kurdish positions south of the town of Tel Brak.
“Upon impact, the projectiles released a yellow gas with a strong smell of rotten onions,” the YPG said in a statement on Friday.
It added that the ground around the impact sites was stained with a liquid that was green at first, but turned yellow on contact with sunlight.
“Our troops 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,” the statement said.
The YPG reported no deaths in the attacks and said that exposed forces subsequently recovered from their symptoms.
They added that YPG fighters had captured industrial-grade gas masks from Islamic State forces in recent weeks, “confirming that they are prepared and equipped for chemical warfare along this sector of the front.”
CAR and Sahan Research, which conducted research in coordination with Kurdish forces, said in a joint statement that seven projectiles were fired in the al-Hasakah city attack and 17 in the attack near Tel Brak.
They said urine samples taken from those affected in the Tel Brak attack tested positive for a compound that is commonly found in agricultural pesticides.
However, they had no definitive answer yet on the precise chemical composition of the agents that had been used in the two attacks in Syria.
The chemical used in the Iraq attack had characteristics and clinical effects “consistent with a chlorine chemical agent,” the groups said.
They said the three attacks in the two countries were “the first documented use by Islamic State forces of projectile-delivered chemical agents against Kurdish forces and civilian targets.”
“Although these chemical attacks appear to be test cases, we expect Islamic State construction skills to advance rapidly, as they have for other IEDS [improvised explosive devices],” Sahan Research managing director Emmanuel Deisser said.
The extremist group has been accused of using chlorine against Kurdish forces in Iraq before.
In March, the autonomous Kurdish government in northern Iraq said it had evidence that the extremist group used chlorine in a car bomb attack on Jan. 23.
Chemical weapons have also been deployed in the Syrian conflict on multiple occasions.
In what has been by far the deadliest incident, sarin gas was used to kill up to 1,400 people in a rebel-held Damascus suburb in August 2013.
The Syrian opposition and much of the international community blamed the attack on the Damascus government.
Syria denied responsibility, but subsequently surrendered its arsenal of chemical weapons under a UN-backed agreement.
There have since been a number of reported attacks using chlorine. Some have been confirmed by the international chemical weapons watchdog, but it did not say who carried them out.
Syria was not required to surrender any stocks of chlorine under the 2013 agreement, because it is widely used for commercial and domestic purposes.
However, use of the gas for military purposes would be a breach of its undertakings under the deal.
More than 230,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests before spiraling into a complex multifront war.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
SECURITY RISK: If there is a conflict between China and Taiwan, ‘there would likely be significant consequences to global economic and security interests,’ it said China remains the top military and cyber threat to the US and continues to make progress on capabilities to seize Taiwan, a report by US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The report provides an overview of the “collective insights” of top US intelligence agencies about the security threats to the US posed by foreign nations and criminal organizations. In its Annual Threat Assessment, the agencies divided threats facing the US into two broad categories, “nonstate transnational criminals and terrorists” and “major state actors,” with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea named. Of those countries, “China presents the most comprehensive and robust military threat