ISIS likely used mustard gas on Iraqi Kurds, U.S. says

Islamic State has likely acquired banned chemical weapons and used them on Kurdish peshmerga fighters in Iraq last week, U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal. Up to 60 peshmerga fighters experienced breathing problems and exhibited other signs of exposure to a blistering agent during a battle with ISIS on Wednesday near the town of Makhmour, about 40 miles southwest of Erbil, the Iraqi Kurdish capital, Kurdish and German defense ministry officials said Thursday.

The most likely blistering agent is mustard gas, a banned chemical first used in World War I. ISIS could have gotten hold of mustard gas in Syria, where weapons inspectors suspect President Bashar al-Assad hid small stockpiles when he agreed to hand over or destroy his chemical munitions in 2014.

If ISIS has chemical weapons, that would present a troubling escalation of its battlefield power, though how much is a matter of debate. "Mustard isn't VX or sarin," far more lethal nerve agents, a senior U.S. military official told The Wall Street Journal. "It has to be used in high concentrations to be fatal." But even a small amount is enough to bolster ISIS's "psychological warfare campaign," added Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, the former head of the British army's chemical weapons unit. "You mention chemical weapons, people immediately freeze and are irrational. That's why Islamic State wants to use them."

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