Daesh Sets Sulfur Alight in Attempt to Foil Attack on Terrorist Stronghold
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A fire set by Daesh militants at a sulfur mine near the city of Mosul in recent days sent plumes of noxious gases over the battlefield, sickening hundreds of civilians and forcing troops to wear protective masks.
Firefighters were still struggling on this weekend to put out the blaze at the Mishraq sulfur mine, about 40 km southeast of Mosul, according to Colonel Abdulrahman Al-Khazali, a spokesman for Iraqi Federal Police who visited the mine.
Officials gave no indication that the fumes had interrupted an almost week-old offensive to capture Mosul from the militants. But the smoldering sulfur added to the list of unconventional weapons - including oil fires, armor-plated car bombs and exploding drones - the militants have deployed in an effort to slow the march of Iraqi forces toward the city.
In another attempt to distract their opponents, dozens of Daesh fighters staged a bold raid on government buildings and police positions in the northern city of Kirkuk, east of Mosul, on Friday. The attack was largely contained by Saturday, but at least 80 people, mainly Kurdish security forces, had been killed during the incursion.
Soldiers were seen wearing surgical masks about 25 km south of the fires on Friday, where a highway and surrounding villages were blanketed in a dull grey haze. Several oil fires burned nearby, obscuring the view of the horizon with a curtain of black smoke.
In recent days, shifting winds began blowing the noxious fumes over US troops stationed at a forward staging base near Mosul, according to American officials.
Although much of the mine was burned during the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, about 10 per cent of the sulfur still remains.
The fires added to concerns that the militants might use crude chemical weapons as Iraqi troops close in on Mosul. The Daesh is believed to have what a senior American official described as a “very rudimentary chemical weapons program” in the city that includes mustard and chlorine gases.
“It can easily go from rudimentary to more sophisticated,” said the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. “We have worked hard to identify it,” he said, speaking of the program.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers are involved in the Mosul offensive, which started on Monday following months of operations in the countryside around the city. They have steadily advanced across swaths of desert and into small hamlets as they draw within miles of the city.
Despite the progress, the forces are at least days, if not weeks, from the city itself. The fighting is expected to be heaviest there, where the Daesh has focused the majority of its defenses, US officials said, the Washington Post reported.
Keeping up the momentum of the operation is seen as critical to maintaining the alliance of disparate forces with often-competing interests that are cooperating, for the moment, to recapture Mosul.
