Did U.S. use chemical weapons?

last updated 8 January 2015

Rome

Italian state television this week broadcast a documentary charging that U.S. troops dropped incendiary chemicals, similar to napalm, on Fallujah during the attack on insurgents there last November. Reports that the U.S. had used bombs containing a lethal chemical called white phosphorus appeared on Islamist Web sites at the time. The U.S. denied using the substance in battle, but said it fired a few phosphorus shells to illuminate the night sky. In the documentary, though, a man described as a former U.S. soldier says he was aware of orders to use the bombs against human targets, and saw the results. “There were burned bodies, burned women, burned children,” said the man, identified as Jeff Englehart. The documentary also contains photographs, supplied by an Iraqi human-rights group, of gruesomely disfigured men, women, and children. The Pentagon had no immediate comment.