BAGHDAD — Kurdish authorities in Iraq said Saturday they have evidence that the Islamic State group used chlorine gas as a chemical weapon against peshmerga fighters, the latest alleged atrocity carried out by the terrorist organization now under attack in Tikrit.
The allegation — by the Kurdistan Region Security Council, stemming from a Jan. 23 suicide truck-bomb attack in northern Iraq — did not immediately draw a reaction from the Islamic State terrorist group, which holds a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria in its self-declared caliphate.
However, Iraqi officials and Kurds fighting in Syria have made similar allegations about the terrorists using the low-grade chemical weapons against them.
The council said the alleged chemical attack took place on a road between Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, and the Syrian border, as peshmerga forces fought to seize a vital supply line used by the Sunni militants. It said its fighters later found “around 20 gas canisters” that had been loaded onto the truck involved in the attack.
There was no independent confirmation of the Kurds’ claim. Peter Sawczak, a spokesman for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which has monitored Syria dismantling its chemical weapons stockpile, said his group had not been asked to investigate.
Chlorine was introduced as a chemical weapon at Ypres in World War I with disastrous effects as gas masks were not widely available.
