U.N. war crime warning of chemical weapons in Iraq

IRBIL, Iraq — The United Nations warned that the alleged use of chemical weapons in Mosul, if confirmed, would be a war crime and a serious violation of international humanitarian law, according to a statement released Saturday.

“This is horrible,” Lise Grande, the humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, said in the statement. “There is never justification — none whatsoever — for the use of chemical weapons.”

The alleged attack occurred this week in eastern Mosul, an area declared fully liberated by Iraqi forces in January. The attack hit a neighborhood along the Tigris River — which roughly divides the city in two.

Doctors in a hospital in the nearby city of Irbil say they began receiving patients showing symptoms of chemical weapons exposure on Thursday.

“The mortar hit our house, right inside the living room where we were sitting,” said Nazim Hamid, whose children had burns to their faces, arms and legs. The family was being treated in the Irbil hospital.

“There was a very bad smell, it was some kind of gas,” he said. “My kids were affected, some of them were burned and some of them had difficulty breathing.”

Hussein Qader, the deputy director of the hospital, said all 10 patients admitted for exposure are in stable condition and will be discharged in the coming days.

Most of western Mosul is still under Islamic State group control despite recent gains on the city’s southwestern edge by Iraqi forces.

Islamic State has used chemical weapons in Iraq and Syria at least 52 times according to a report published late last year by IHS conflict monitor, a London-based research and intelligence gathering group. The report said that at least 19 of the 52 attacks took place in and around Mosul.

Iraqi forces launched the operation to retake Mosul in October and began a push to retake the city’s western half last month.