Living under a toxic cloud
Iraqi children suffering from breathing difficulties after IS torches oil wells
QAYYARA (Iraq): Under a cloud of black smoke, a group of around a dozen children wearing flimsy sandals have gathered to play.
Oil wells around the Iraqi town of Qayyara are still burning, weeks after they were torched by Islamic State militants in an attempt to slow the Iraqi army’s advance.
Under the shadow of an oil fire, the children are coated in black soot.
“Yes, yes!” they said, coughing, when asked if they were suffering from breathing difficulties because of the smoke.
“We are scared of it, the smoke makes it difficult to breathe,” said a 10-year-old girl with green eyes and gold and red sandals caked in dirt.
Not far away, an Iraqi soldier fired a few rounds from his Kalashnikov rifle into the air.
A month into their battle with Iraqi forces for control of the city of Mosul, the militants are leaving behind not just physical devastation but environmental damage from a cocktail of toxic pollutants, human rights groups say.
In Qayyara, a town south of Mosul, IS fighters launched at least three chemical attacks in September and October after Iraqi forces recaptured the town in August, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report last week.
A chemical weapons expert told HRW the attacks caused painful burns to at least seven people, consistent with exposure to low levels of a chemical warfare agent known as “vesicants”, or blister agents.
“ISIS attacks using toxic chemicals show a brutal disregard for human life and the laws of war,” said Lama Fakih, HRW’s deputy Middle East director, referring to IS.
“As ISIS fighters flee, they have been repeatedly attacking and endangering the civilians they left behind, increasing concerns for residents of Mosul and other contested areas.”
The United Nations says IS is stockpiling ammonia and sulphur in civilian areas and fears it intends to carry out more chemical attacks as Iraqi forces, backed by US air power, battle the militants in an effort to drive them out of Mosul, their last major stronghold in Iraq.
In Qayyara, children and adults still remember public acts of violence and executions for disobeying the strict laws of the ultra-hardline group that seized the town in 2014.
“They closed our schools and taught (our people) how to kill, fight, and sacrifice,” said Anas Mahmood, 21, who refused to join the militant group but missed two years of education while living under IS.
Now the smoke haze from oil fires is a constant reminder of the destruction wrought by the militants.
Since the beginning of the summer, IS fighters have set fire to more than a dozen oil wells in the area, according to the UN. — Reuters