Iraq accuses ISIS of stealing grain
(Image credit: Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images)

Iraq's agriculture minister, Falah Hassan al-Zeidan, said that the Islamic State has taken more than one million metric tons of grain from the country and given it to militant-run cities in Syria.

In a statement on Iraq's Agriculture Ministry's website, al-Zeidan said that the wheat and barley were taken from the Nineveh Province in northern Iraq to the cities of Raqqa and Deir al-Zor in Syria.

The news comes months after a similar claim in August, when ISIS allegedly took more than 40,000 metric tons of wheat from the Nineveh and Anbar provinces. Reuters suggests that by taking the grain, ISIS "is hoping to make its self-proclaimed caliphate self-sufficient."

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Meghan DeMaria is a staff writer at TheWeek.com. She has previously worked for USA Today and Marie Claire.