ISIS used chlorine gas
Iraqi officials said the so called Islamic State (ISIS) militants used chlorine gas during fighting with Iraqi security forces and Shia militiamen last month north of Baghdad.
On the ground, US officials said an attack by the Islamic State group on the Syrian town of Kobane has stalled but, in neighbouring Iraq, government troops are months from mounting a major fightback.
US-led aircraft have flown nearly 6,600 sorties in the air war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and dropped more than 1,700 bombs, the US military said.
Meanwhile, an official from Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region yesterday said it will send up to 200 fighters to aid the defenders of Kobane next week.
The peshmerga fighters will be armed with automatic weapons, mortars and rocket launchers, an official said, declining to specify what route they would take. They are likely to pass through Turkey, which said this week it would allow peshmerga to do so to relieve the town's defenders.
The use of chlorine gas as a weapon adds a new concern to the turmoil in the country.
A senior security official, a local official from the town of Duluiya and an official from the town of Balad say the ISIS group used bombs with chlorine-filled cylinders during September clashes.
They told The Associated Press on Friday that about 40 troops and militiamen were slightly affected by the chlorine and showed symptoms consistent with chlorine poisoning. They quickly recovered on treatment.
Meanwhile, US officials on Thursday said ISIS has fast become one of the world's wealthiest terror groups, generating tens of millions of dollars a month from black market oil sales, ransoms and extortion.
It earns $1 million a day alone by selling crude oil from fields, said David Cohen, Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
ISIS is now "considered the world's wealthiest and most financially sophisticated terrorist organization," said Marwan Muasher, vice president at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Unlike al-Qaeda, ISIS does not attract most of its funds from rich donors, often in Gulf countries, or from state sponsors. The group has also pocketed about $20 million this year from kidnappings, particularly of journalists and European hostages. And it demands money from local businesses in cities and towns through "a sophisticated extortion racket," plunders antiquities and sells off women and girls as sex slaves.
Iraqi security forces are currently able to stage small-scale attacks against ISIS, but need time to plan and train for a larger operation, even with the aid of US-led air strikes, a US official told reporters.
"It's well within their capability to do that (counter-attack), on the order of months, not years," the official said. But he added: "It's not imminent."
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