IS accused of using chemical agent
12 treated after attacks in eastern Mosul neighborhoods
IRBIL, Iraq — Twelve people from the embattled city of Mosul, including a 2month-old baby, have been treated for suspected exposure to a blistering chemical agent, medics said Saturday, as Islamic State militants strike back at governmentheld neighborhoods while trying to hold off advancing government forces.
The patients, who were being treated in a hospital in the northern Kurdish city of Irbil, displayed symptoms of a chemical attack, including blisters, burns, respiratory problems, irritation to the eyes and vomiting. They described three separate attacks with rockets carrying gas over the past week on neighborhoods in eastern Mosul recaptured by government forces.
“There was a hiss of gas, and then we were suffocating,” said Zeina Fawzi, who was sitting in the kitchen with her husband when a rocket exploded outside the door. She and her husband said it dispersed black oily droplets through the air. She pulled down her dress to reveal a blister on her shoulder.
The militants, who still control much of the western side of the city, have regularly bombarded the eastern side with mortars and rockets, causing misery for civilians living there. More than 1 million civilians were still in the city when the offensive to retake it began nearly five months ago.
Iraqi security forces have attempted to keep people in their homes, but the number of those fleeing has escalated as those forces make inroads into the western neighborhoods.
About 10,000 people are fleeing each day, according to Jassim Mohammed al-Jaff, Iraq’s minister for migration and displacement. A total of 43,806 people have fled western Mosul since Feb. 25, including 15,400 people in the past two days, the United Nations said. More than 200,000 people have been forced from their homes since the operation began.
The use of a “blistering chemical agent” in a densely populated city is “completely unacceptable” and constitutes a war crime, said Lise Grande, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq. She said tests are being conducted to determine the nature of the agent. Some of the victims were told it was probably mustard gas, which was first used on the battlefield during World War I.
Among the most severely injured were a mother and her five children in an attack Thursday on Mosul’s northeastern Giraj al-Shimal district. The children were between 2 months and 11 years old, said John Schad, a doctor with the International Committee of the Red Cross. In the room behind him, one of the young boys lay in his hospital bed with relatives at his side, his face severely swollen and bandages around his head. A 3-year-old girl is in critical condition, Dr. Schad said, adding that they would all “most probably” recover.
Two of the 12 patients being treated had been discharged, he said.
Iraqi authorities, unlikely to want to create mass panic, have denied that suspected chemical attacks have taken place.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has previously confirmed mustard gas was used in an attack by the Islamic State on Kurdish peshmerga forces in 2015, but this is the first time a blistering agent is suspected to have been used in Mosul. Previously during the offensive, civilians and soldiers have been treated for breathing difficulties consistent with chlorine gas use.