Tag Archives: Chemical Weapons

China urges U.N. ‘back draft resolution on poison gas’

Women, affected by what activists say was a gas attack, receive treatment inside a makeshift hospital in Kfar Zeita village in Hama

BEIJING (Reuters) – China on Thursday urged U.N. Security Council members to back a draft resolution demanding states report when militants are developing chemical weapons in Syria.

Some diplomats have dismissed the proposed resolution as a bid to distract from accusations the Syrian government uses such weapons.

Russia and China circulated a draft resolution to the 15-member body on Wednesday, which Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said could serve as a deterrent to “terrorist” groups such as Islamic State from using chemical weapons.

Islamic State militants are believed to be responsible for sulfur mustard gas attacks in Syria and Iraq last year, the United States has said. Russia has also said it sees a high probability that Islamic State is using chemical weapons.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang called on “all relevant parties to strengthen coordination, cooperate and jointly oppose and punish any party’s move to use chemical weapons”.

“We also hope all parties on the Security Council can support this Russia-China draft resolution,” Lu told reporters at a regular press briefing.

“We resolutely oppose anyone, for whatever purpose, under any circumstances, using chemical weapons,” Lu said.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) concluded in a confidential report that at least two people were exposed to sulfur mustard in Marea, north of Aleppo, in August.

The draft resolution, seen by Reuters, would demand that states, particularly those neighboring Syria, “immediately report any actions by non-State actors to develop, acquire, manufacture, possess, transport, transfer, or use chemical weapons and their means of delivery to the Security Council”.

Some council diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the draft resolution was a ploy by Russia to divert attention from allegations that the Syrian government continued to use chemical weapons. Churkin denied it was a distraction.

Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013 under a deal broker by Moscow and Washington, but the OPCW has since found chlorine has been “systematically and repeatedly” used as a weapon. Government and opposition forces have denied using chlorine.

(Reporting by Michael Martina; editing by Robert Birsel)

France carries out biggest ever attack drill ahead of soccer championships

PARIS (Reuters) – France has staged a mock chemical weapons attack on a soccer “fan zone” as it prepares for the Euro 2016 soccer championships in June, less than a year after Islamist militants killed 130 people in attacks in and around the French capital.

More than a thousand police and firemen took part in the attack response drill in the southern city of Nîmes, the largest ever carried out in France.

The exercise was designed to simulate a chemical attack in a “fan zone”, a closed perimeter area where soccer fans will be able to monitor the competition on giant outdoor screens when not attending matches in one of the 10 stadiums.

A Reuters witness saw dozens of police and military officers taking part in the drill, some of them equipped with gas masks.

French anti-terrorism police arrested a group with Islamist militant ties on Wednesday, suspecting one of them may have been planning another attack in the capital.

“In Nîmes, it was about a chemical or bacteriological threat,” Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve was quoted as saying in daily newspaper 20 minutes.

“We don’t believe there is a genuine risk of this type of attack but we must envisage every hypothesis.”

It will be the third time that France hosted the UEFA European Championship after having been chosen for the 1960 inaugural tournament and the finals in 1984.

(Reporting by Matthias Blamont; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Russia calls for pact against chemical warfare by Islamic State

GENEVA (Reuters) – Russia said on Tuesday there was a growing threat from Islamic State militants waging chemical warfare in the Middle East and called for global negotiations on a new pact to combat what he called “a grave reality of our time”.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the appeal in a speech to the U.N.-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, a now largely moribund forum which clinched a major pact banning chemical weapons in the 1990s.

“However, we still face significant gaps related, in particular, to the use of chemicals for terrorist purposes,” Lavrov told the 65-member-state forum.

“This threat is getting extremely urgent in the light of newly revealed facts of repeated use of not only industrial toxic chemicals but also of full-fledged chemical warfare agents by ISIL (Islamic State) and other terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq,” he said.

Islamic State militants are believed to be responsible for sulfur mustard gas attacks in Syria and Iraq last year, the United States said last month.

A confidential report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) concluded that at least two people were exposed to sulfur mustard in Marea, north of Aleppo, in August.

“It does not leave any doubt that chemical terrorism is emerging not as an abstract threat, but a grave reality of our time which could and should be addressed,” Lavrov said.

“There is a growing danger of similar crimes being committed on the territory of Libya and Yemen,” he said.

Lavrov said there were reports of militant groups gaining access to scientific and technical documentation on the production of chemical weapons, seizing chemical plants and “engaging foreign specialists to help synthesize chemical warfare agents”, without giving details.

He said launching negotiations would revive the Conference on Disarmament, whose members include U.N. Security Council permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, but which has not been able to clinch any disarmament agreements since “the last decade of the 20th Century”.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Officials investigating another suspected case of ISIS using chemical weapons

Officials are investigating if the Islamic State used chemical weapons in a recent attack in Iraq.

The Kurdistan Regional Security Council and officials from the United States-led coalition against the Islamic State are looking into Thursday’s events, the council tweeted on Friday.

According to the council, Islamic State militants used homemade rockets in an attack on the town of Sinjar, which is located about 80 miles west of Mosul in northern Iraq.

Dozens of civilians and Peshmerga military forces subsequently vomited, experienced nausea or had trouble breathing and received treatment, the council tweeted. It did not say if anyone died.

Officials did not specify which chemical the Islamic State is believed to have used in the attack.

If the investigation does confirm a chemical weapon was used, the council said it would be the eighth time that the Islamic State used the substances in their attacks against Peshmerga forces.

The council tweeted last March that it believed the Islamic State used chlorine in a car bomb attack in Iraq in January 2015, saying soil and clothing samples contained evidence of its use.

The council has also tweeted it has evidence the Islamic State used mustard gas in prior attacks, saying some 35 Peshmerga forces were exposed during an August 2015 shelling near Erbil, Iraq.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has also said it was concerned about chlorine gas being used in various attacks in Syrian villages in 2014.

An OPCW fact-finding mission into the attacks in Syria did not address who used the chlorine.

More than 190 countries have agreed to a 1997 United Nations treaty on chemical weapons, which prohibits their use or production and calls for nations to destroy their existing arsenals.

Israeli city frets about chemical depot after Hezbollah threat

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The mayor of Haifa implored Israel’s prime minister on Tuesday to remove an industrial chemical depot from the northern city, saying a veiled threat by Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia to shell the site put as many as a million people in danger.

Israeli worries about the toxic risks posed by the four-storey ammonia vat in Haifa port were stoked by Hezbollah rocket salvoes in the 2006 Lebanon war. In 2013, Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet said the depot would shut down as part of a planned new ammonia storage and production plant in the southern Negev desert.

Lags in the plan’s implementation, and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah’s description last week of the Haifa depot as a makeshift weapon of mass-destruction should it be attacked, prompted Mayor Yona Yahav’s call on Netanyahu to take action.

“We are alone in this battle,” Yahav told Israel’s Army Radio. “There are a million people around this depot here. It is a gaseous material. It is very, very dangerous material.”

Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond. The Environment Ministry referred Reuters to a statement it put out after Nasrallah’s threat, in which it said that by the end of next month it expected bids for construction of the Negev site.

“Currently, the main issue delaying construction of the plant is the high price of gas, since the plant needs gas to produce ammonia,” said the statement, which also acknowledged the Haifa depot was “an environmental and security risk”.

Yahav argued that it was incumbent on the Netanyahu government “to put up the money and not wait for the business sector. Health and danger are more important, the residents are 100 times more important, than any economic consideration.”

The depot belongs to Haifa Chemicals Ltd., a private company, the Haifa municipality said. The company was unavailable for comment.

A decade ago, Israel relocated a gas depot from Pi Glilot, near Tel Aviv, after a bomb set off by Palestinian militants at the site almost caused a major conflagration.

Yahav said the Pi Glilot move also freed up lucrative real estate — a motive that would not apply for the Haifa depot.

“They (government authorities) don’t really take us into account, because we are talking about a depot that is in a port and to my regret there is no great property value,” he said.

Haifa is home to many other large industrial plants including Oil Refineries, Israel’s biggest refinery.

In his Feb 16 speech, Nasrallah said Hezbollah had spared the Haifa depot in 2006 but might not do so in the future.

“We don’t have a nuclear bomb,” he said. “The intended ‘nuclear bomb’ is the combination of several rockets and the ammonia storage tanks in Haifa, the result of which would be like a nuclear bomb.”

(Writing by Dan Williams; editing by Katharine Houreld)

Heavy Clashes at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem

Muslim youths attacked Israeli police for a second day at the al-Aqsa mosque complex in East Jerusalem.

The site, considered holy by both Jews and Muslims, was raided by Israeli police after Palestinian youths attempted to attack far-right Jews who visited the complex for the Jewish New Year.

“As the police entered the compound, masked youths fled inside the mosque and threw stones at the force,” a police spokesperson said in a statement.

Nine Palestinian youths were arrested.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would be holding emergency talks on the clashes between police and Palestinians that began Sunday.

Netanyahu said in a statement he would “use any means to maintain the status quo and the rule of law on the Temple Mount”.

Police also discovered that the Palestinians were stocking up on pipe bombs and other weapons.  A cache of bombs and weapons was found near to the mosque site and is currently being forensically examined by Israeli authorities.

United Nations officials in the area called for calm saying they wanted everyone to do their share in “ensuring that visitors and worshippers demonstrate restraint and respect for the sanctity of the area”.

Pentagon Believes ISIS Used Chemical Weapons

Pentagon officials have confirmed that they are investigating reports of Islamic terrorist group ISIS using chemical weapons against Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq.

The officials were quick to emphasize that it was likely a small amount and in a weak concentration, but it still would confirm the terrorists have found at least one cache of Syrian chemical weapons.

A senior U.S. official said that after a barrage fired at a Peshmerga unit last week, there were  “wounds consistent with a blister-producing agent.”

“We continue to monitor these reports closely, and would further stress that any use of chemicals or biological material as a weapon is completely inconsistent with international standards and norms regarding such capabilities,” Alistair Baskey, spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, said in a statement.

Peshmerga Brig. Gen. Sirwan Barzani told CNN they suspect the agent used was mustard gas because some troops also suffered breathing difficulties beyond the skin blistering.

ISIS had been previously accused by monitoring groups of using chlorine based chemical weapons against Kurdish forces.

“We continue to take these and all allegations of chemical weapons use very seriously. As in previous instances of alleged ISIL use of chemicals as weapons, we are aware of the reports and are seeking additional information. We continue to monitor these reports closely, and would further stress that use of any chemicals or biological material as a weapon is completely inconsistent with international standards and norms regarding such capabilities,” Blake Narendra, a spokesperson for the State Department’s Arms Control, Verification and Compliance Bureau, told reporters.

Mustard gas is only deadly in large quantities but can cause painful burns and blisters that could render an enemy immobile from pain.

Assad Believed To Still Have Chemical Weapons

The Wall Street Journal has reported U.S. intelligence agencies have told them the Syrian regime of Bashir al-Assad has not turned over all of their chemical weapons as agreed to in 2013.

Assad and his government had agreed to give up all their chemical weapons after a sarin nerve agent attack on a Damascus suburb.  The negative response of the international community and threats to the Syrian government appeared to make them relent of their use of chemical agents.

Inspectors told the Journal that in their visits to Syria, they were only taken to areas that the Assad government said were chemical weapons storage and/or production facilities.  The inspectors were not allowed into areas that were not designated chemical weapon locations by the Syrian government.

“Under the terms of their deployment, the inspectors had access only to sites that the Assad regime had declared were part of its chemical-weapons program. The US and other powers had the right to demand access to undeclared sites if they had evidence they were part of the chemical-weapons program. But that right was never exercised, in part, inspectors and Western officials say, because their governments didn’t want a standoff with the regime,” the report states.

“Members of the inspection team didn’t push for answers, worried that it would compromise their primary objective of getting the regime to surrender the 1,300 tons of chemicals it admitted to having,” the report stated. “The Syrians laid out the ground rules. Inspectors could visit only sites Syria had declared, and only with 48-hour notice. Anything else was off-limits, unless the regime extended an invitation.”

Now, American intelligence agencies say they believe Assad is holding a cache of nerve agents even more powerful than Sarin for use if the terrorist group ISIS makes a run at Syrian government stronghold and appear to be close to overrunning them.

The breaking of this news comes on the heels of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons saying the Syrian chemical weapons have been neutralized at sea on a U.S. Naval vessel, the Cape Ray.

However, 16 metric tons of hydrogen fluoride from the Syrian stock remains in storage at a facility in Port Arthur, Texas.

U.S. To Send More Weapons, Soldiers to NATO

Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Monday that the U.S. will send weapons, aircraft and troops as needed to NATO’s new rapid reaction force.  The force will defend Europe in the event of an aggressive move by Russia or ISIS.

President Obama made the commitment last year during a NATO summit but Carter is revealing the details of the plan.

“We do not seek a cold, let alone a hot war with Russia,” Carter said at Atlantik Brucke, a Berlin think tank that focuses on the German-U.S. relationship. “We do not seek to make Russia an enemy. But make no mistake: we will defend our allies, the rules-based international order, and the positive future it affords us. We will stand up to Russia’s actions and their attempts to re-establish a Soviet-era sphere of influence.”

The U.S. will provide intelligence and surveillance capabilities, special operations forces, transport aircraft and a range of weapons from bombers and fighters to ship-based missiles.  A large ground force is not part of the U.S. commitment.

Carter is attending his first NATO meeting as Defense Secretary and plans to bring a two-pronged approach to NATO’s needs:  the first is a strong defense against Russia in an attempt to stop them from establishing a Soviet-era influence on the region while partnering with Russia to fight Islamic terrorism.

ISIS Training British Jihadis To Carry Out Chemical Weapons Attacks

A new report says that ISIS is training terrorists in Britain via video conference to carry out chemical weapons attacks on trains and other public transportation systems.

“I am convinced that IS (another name for ISIS) fighters are all being given training in chemical weapons and the British ones, who are likely to be more educated, will all be targeted in the hope they may return home,” said Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, the retired head of chemical and biological weapons for the British Army, according to the Mail Online.

The Colonel said that because of British laws, people can obtain large amounts of chlorine without a license, so the bomb could be a chlorine weapon.

“They will have a reasonable idea on how to use chlorine and other toxic chemicals as a terror weapon,” he added.

“This could happen on a train or tube or even at a big football match. Acquiring weapons and ammunition is very difficult in the UK but you can get up to 90 tonnes of chlorine without any license.”

Chlorine can burn the lungs when present in the air in a concentrated amount.

“Chlorine is not very toxic and the green and yellow clouds are easy to see and avoid. It is very non-persistent only lasting for a few minutes. It was used in the First World War but dropped because it did not work very well,” he continued.

“It is key that ISIS don’t get the advantage of an unexpected chemical attack in the UK. If you can hold your breath for 30 seconds and run in the opposite direction you will be okay. If outside you should aim to climb or reach higher ground.”