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ISIS uses chemical weapons in unleashing terror in Middle East

A fighter of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) holds an ISIL flag and a weapon on a street in the city of Mosul, June 23, 2014. | Reuters

Several lab test results suggest that the international terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has used mustard gas during an attack against the Kurdish forces of Iraq last year.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) claims ISIS is using chemicals in warfare after 35 Kurdish soldiers became sick following encounters with the terrrorists southwest of Erbil, the capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.

If this is true, this will not be the first time that the terrorist group has used chemicals in fighting for its cause.

Back in October, the OPCW also confirmed that the group used mustard gas in Syria. The terrorist group claims that it has established a 'caliphate' in Syrian and Iraqi territories, and as a result it does not recognize any national boundaries.

It is still unclear how the terrorists managed to get their hands on such dangerous substances and this is one of the questions that will be discussed by the OPCW next month.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, who is a biological and chemical warfare specialist, said in a Reuters report that ISIS members may have developed the chemical weapon themselves.

The substances may also have come from Syria's stockpile, which it used against Iraq. International authorities asked Damascus to disclose its chemical weapons program, but apparently they failed to do so. 

"If Syria has indeed given up its chemical weapons to the international community, it is only the part that has been declared to the OPCW and the declaration was obviously incomplete," a source said in a report.

If ISIS controls these stockpiles, there are concerns the group may use them to spread further terror in the region.