AP, Baghdad :Kurdish authorities in Iraq said on Saturday they have evidence that the self-styled Islamic State group used chlorine gas as a chemical weapon against peshmerga fighters, the latest alleged atrocity carried out by the extremist organisation now under attack in Tikrit.The allegation by the Kurdistan Region Security Council, stemming from a Jan 23 suicide truck bomb attack in northern Iraq, did not immediately draw a reaction from the IS group, which holds a third of Iraq and neighbouring Syria in its self-declared caliphate. However, Iraqi officials and Kurds fighting in Syria have made similar allegations about the militants using the low-grade chemical weapons against them.In a statement, the council said the alleged chemical attack took place on a road between Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, and the Syrian border, as peshmerga forces fought to seize a vital supply line used by the Sunni militants.It said its fighters later found “around 20 gas canisters” that had been loaded onto the truck involved in the attack. Video provided by the council showed a truck racing down a road, white smoke pouring out of it as it came under heavy fire from peshmerga fighters. It later showed a white, billowing cloud after the truck exploded and the remanants of it scattered across a road. An official with the Kurdish council said that dozens of peshmerga fighters were treated for “dizziness, nausea, vomiting and general weakness” after the attack.The Kurds say samples of clothing and soil from the site were analysed by an unnamed lab in an unnamed coalition partner nation, which found chlorine traces.”The fact IS relies on such tactics demonstrates it has lost the initiative and is resorting to desperate measures,” the Kurdish government said in the statement, using an alternate acronym for the group. There was no independent confirmation of the Kurds’ claim.A spokesman for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which has monitored Syria dismantling its chemical weapons stockpile, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Kurdish officials say lorry loaded with gas canisters exploded on highway as peshmerga soldiers were being deployed.Kurdish authorities in Iraq say they have evidence that fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) used chlorine gas as a chemical weapon against their peshmerga forces.The Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC) said in a statement on Saturday that EU-certified laboratory tests showed that soil and clothing samples collected from the remnants of an attempted suicide bombing in northern Iraq on January 23 had levels of chlorine that indicated the substance was used as a weapon.The Kurdish allegation could not be independently confirmed. The statement said that a lorry loaded with around 20 gas canisters exploded on a highway between the Iraqi city of Mosul, in Nineveh province, and Syria, as Kurdish forces were being deployed following an offensive against ISIL fighters.Reuters news agency, however, cited a Kurdish security source as saying that the Kurdish forces fired a rocket at the vehicle carrying the explosives, so the only casualty was the lorry’s driver.However, about a dozen peshmerga soldiers experienced symptoms of nausea, vomiting, dizziness or weakness, the source said, which could be attributed to exposure to chlorine.
