Iraqi gains reveal huge scale of Islamic State arms industry
In the more than two years since it seized control over swathes of the country, IS established a sprawling and highly organised system that experts say no other insurgent group has matched
Factories churning out tens of thousands of munitions and an entire street turned into a conveyor belt for car bombs: advances by Iraqi forces around Mosul have laid bare the scale of the Islamic State group’s arms industry.
In the more than two years since it seized control over swathes of the country, IS established a sprawling and highly organised system that experts say no other insurgent group has matched.
I can’t name another armed group that manufactures on such a scale and with such a degree of coordination
The capability has seriously boosted the threat from the group as it battles ferociously to cling to territory in Iraq and Syria – and the fresh intelligence could now prove vital in countering its plots to carry out attacks on the West.
Iraqi army deminer Hashim Ali picked his way carefully through the rubble as he explained how IS transformed Mart Shmony street in Qaraqosh, some 16km southeast of Mosul, into a production line of death after seizing the town in 2014 and forcing the mainly Christian population to flee.
Once, it was a bustling thoroughfare of car workshops and stores selling Turkish furniture, but for the jihadists it offered all they needed to make the armoured car bombs they use to blow up civilians and slow advancing Iraqi troops.
