Islamic State deploys unconventional weapon, sickens hundreds with toxic sulphur mine fire near Mosul
A fire set by Islamic State militants at a sulphur mine near the city of Mosul in recent days sent plumes of noxious gases over the battlefield, sickening hundreds of civilians and forcing Iraqi and US troops to wear protective masks.
Firefighters were still struggling on this weekend to put out the blaze at the Mishraq sulfur mine, about 40 km southeast of Mosul, according to Colonel Abdulrahman Al-Khazali, a spokesman for Iraqi Federal Police who visited the mine.
Officials gave no indication that the fumes had interrupted an almost week old offensive to capture Mosul from the militants. But the smouldering sulphur added to the list of unconventional weapons - including oil fires, armour-plated car bombs and exploding drones - the militants have deployed in an effort to slow the march of Iraqi forces toward the city.
Soldiers were seen wearing surgical masks about 25 km south of the fires on Friday, where a highway and surrounding villages were blanketed in a dull grey haze. Several oil fires burned nearby, obscuring the view of the horizon with a curtain of black smoke.
In recent days, shifting winds began blowing the noxious fumes over US troops stationed at a forward staging base near Mosul, according to American officials.
Although much of the mine was burned during the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, about 10 per cent of the sulphur still remains.
“It can easily go from rudimentary to more sophisticated,” said the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. “We have worked hard to identify it,” he said, speaking of the program.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi and Kurdish peshmerga soldiers are involved in the Mosul offensive, which started on Monday following months of operations in the countryside around the city. They have steadily advanced across swaths of desert and into small hamlets as they draw within miles of the city.
Despite the progress, the forces are at least days, if not weeks, from the city itself. The fighting is expected to be heaviest there, where the Islamic State has focused the majority of its defences, US officials said.
Keeping up the momentum of the operation is seen as critical to maintaining the alliance of disparate forces with often-competing interests that are cooperating, for the moment, to recapture Mosul.
Turkey, which maintains a contingent of roughly 500 troops near Mosul, has insisted on a role in the offensive. Iraqi officials say the Turkish troops, who have been training Sunni forces at a base there since December, are in the country without permission.
“The Mosul battle is an Iraqi battle, and the ones who are conducting it are Iraqis,” Abadi said on Saturday. “We don’t have any problems.” If help were needed, he added, “we will ask for it from Turkey or from other regional countries.”
At a news conference following a meeting with Abadi, Carter insisted that the United States could still play a role in negotiating the impasse.
“We all need to stay focused on the fight against ISIL,” Carter said, using another acronym for the Islamic State.
