ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - An Islamic State (ISIS) plot to use chemical bombs against Peshmerga frontlines in Makhmour was foiled, according to a Peshmerga statement.
"In a bid to target Peshmerga stockades in the village of Baqirt on the Makhmour front, ISIS militants wanted to explode mortars rigged with chemical weapons," according to the statement issued Saturday.
Before ISIS could carry out the attack, "the Peshmerga foiled the attack, and later bomb disposal teams defused the mortars," the statement said.
ISIS has used chemical weapons against the Peshmerga, including on the Makhmour front, as an alternative tactic to thwart Peshmerga advances.
After a suspected chemical weapons attack by ISIS on the Peshmerga in early August, tests proved that ISIS had used mustard gas against Kurdish fighters on the Gwer- Makhmour front, wounding several fighters. A Peshmerga official confirmed to Rudaw that 45 mortars were fired at Peshmerga positions in just one night.
Brigadier General Sirwan Barzani, commanding officer of the infantry division in Gwer – Makhmour, told Rudaw the mustard gas had come in a mortar barrage of a kind the Kurds had not seen before in ISIS attacks.
US officials had announced an investigation into whether ISIS had in fact used chemical weapons after a report broadcasted by Rudaw TV and ENEX media network.
Following requests by KRG to examine the types of weapons used against the Peshmerga on the frontline, the German military acknowledged evidence of a chemical weapons attack on Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers fighting ISIS.
There was a “possible chemical weapons attack on the Kurdish frontlines at sector six,” the German defense ministry said after the attack.
Kurdish military experts believe ISIS is transferring mustard gas and other chemical weapons from Syria in a bid to use them against Peshmerga forces.
“ISIS has seized chemical weapons including the mustard and toxic gas in Syria and they transferred them to their controlled areas in Iraq, where they are in close proximity to Peshmerga frontlines, especially in the group’s stronghold of Mosul, to use them in fights against the Peshmerga,” Ahmed Shawqi, a Kurdish military expert, told Rudaw in August.
Internationally, such weapons are illegal. But, "(ISIS) never respect the international norms and laws," Shawqi said.
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