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Washington (CNN)ISIS is suspected of firing a shell with mustard agent that landed at the Qayyara air base in Iraq Tuesday where US and Iraqi troops are operating, according to several US officials. The shell was categorized by officials as either a rocket or artillery shell. After it landed on the base, just south of Mosul, US troops tested it and received an initial reading for a chemical agent they believe is mustard. No US troops were hurt or have displayed symptoms of exposure to mustard agent. One official said the agent had "low purity" and was "poorly weaponized." A...

The US-led coalition carried out the first air strikes on Islamic State (ISIS) chemical weapons sites, the Pentagon said Thursday, acting on crucial information from a captured senior insurgent. The successful multiple bombings came as a result of intelligence from Sulayman Dawud al-Bakkar, also known as Abu Dawud, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said, confirming the name of the ISIS group operative said to be a chemical weapons expert for the terrorists. His capture by US special forces in February - Dawud was transferred Thursday into Iraqi custody after interrogation - appears to be a major boon in the fight...

Iraq is searching for "highly dangerous" radioactive material stolen last year, according to an environment ministry document and seven security, environmental and provincial officials who fear it could be used as a weapon if acquired by Islamic State. The material, stored in a protective case the size of a laptop computer, went missing in November from a storage facility near the southern city of Basra belonging to U.S. oilfield services company Weatherford (WFT.N), the document obtained by Reuters showed and officials confirmed.

Washington (AFP) - CIA director John Brennan has said that Islamic State fighters have used chemical weapons and have the capability to MAKE SMALL QUANTITIES of chlorine and mustard gas, CBS News reported. "We have a number of instances where ISIL has used chemical munitions on the battlefield," Brennan told CBS News, which released excerpts of an interview to air in full on the "60 Minutes" news program on Sunday. The network added that he told "60 Minutes" the CIA believes that the IS group has the ability to make small amounts of mustard or chlorine gas for weapons. "There...

The risk of an improvised nuclear bomb being detonated in a foreign city has “increased substantially” because of tensions with Russia, he claims. Dr Hamish de Bretton-Gordon said the extremist jihadist group already had chemical weapons such as mustard gas and it is “only a matter of time” before it managed to launch an attack capable of destroying a substantial part of a city. Bretton-Gordon, who formerly commanded the British Army’s Chemical Biological Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) regiment, gave the stark warning as he addressed the Global Resilience conference in London on Thursday. “Isis have made it known they want...

Initial tests on mortar fragments from an Aug. 11 Islamic State attack against Kurdish forces in Iraq have tested positive for the chemical weapon mustard gas, the Pentagon said Friday. A few days after the attack near Makhmour, the Kurdish Peshmerga forces brought fragments from the mortar rounds to U.S. forces. Makhmour is just south of Irbil, where the U.S. has one of its training center sites. “We were able to take the fragments and do a field test on those fragments, and they showed the presence of HD, or what is known as sulfur mustard. That is a class...

A few weeks ago, the US Central Command announced that an air raid had killed an ISIS chemical weapon expert in Mosul. The ISIS operative, Iraqi engineer Mahmoud al-Sabawi, used to work at Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons program before he joined al-Qaeda in Iraq after the 2003 US led invasion. The idea that ISIS terrorists have access to chemical weapons brings back images of the genocide inflicted on the Kurds by Saddam Hussein in the late 1980’s. The Halabja Massacre killed up to 5,000 and injured between 7,000 and 10,000 more. If ISIS jihadists have a stash of chemical weapons,...