US to investigate possible use of mustard gas by ISIL

German newspaper Bild reported on Thursday that Islamic State fighters may have used chlorine gas shells in an attack on Kurdish forces in Makhmur.

The Syrian government has previously said that all its stockpiles of such weapons have been destroyed.

Germany’s military has been training Kurdish forces in the area, and on Thursday, the German Defense Ministry said some 60 Kurdish fighters had suffered breathing difficulties from the attack – a telltale sign of chemical weapons use.

“Although these chemical attacks appear to be test cases, we expect Isis construction skills to advance rapidly as they have for other IEDS [improvised explosive devices]”, said a spokesman at the time.

Kurdish forces fighting Islamic State (IS) jihadists in northern Iraq have reported being attacked with chemical weapons in recent days, the German defence ministry has said. He also stated that the government eradicated hundreds of tonnes of mustard gas.

The U.S. began airstrikes against ISIS in Syria and Iraq a little more than a year ago, and unmanned U.S. drones have been launched from inside Turkey into Syria.

The regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein notoriously deployed mustard gas – a weaponized chemical most commonly known for its use in World War I that causes severe skin blistering – against the Kurds in 1983, and the nerve gas Tabun beginning in 1985.

A senior military U.S. official tried to downplay it by telling the Journal that mustard gas had to be used in high volumes in order for it to be deadly, and that it didn’t seem like ISIS had a lot of it.

Levin believes that the use of chemical weapons may well lead to a change in the global approach to Islamic State. Syria admitted to having a chemical weapons program, but also agreed to shut the project down-completely, after which point, President Bashar al-Assad sent over 1,300 tonnes of weapons to the OPCW for disposal.

In an audio briefing to the Pentagon, Ryder said that the U.S. recently conducted airstrikes in the Mahmour area but there were now no coalition forces with the Kurds on the ground.

The use of chlorine as a weapon is banned under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. We should be standing behind them, instead of averting our gaze while they dodge Turkish bombs and ISIS’ poison gas.