The Islamic State (ISIS), which has reached dangerously close to Israel’s Golan Heights border, appears to have obtained and used chemical weapons, according to a Reuters report quoting the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
ISIS was not directly accused of using mustard gas that killed two people, one of them a baby, but the gang of beheaders is the obvious suspect.
Reports of disappearing stockpiles of the Assad regime’s chemical and biologic weapons, banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention, surfaced before the government said it removed them.
Assad’s forces have deployed chemical weapons several times, but even more frightening is the ISIS getting its hands on them.
The OPCW report stated that mustard gas was used near Aleppo in August. A source told Reuters that either ISIS has been able to produce mustard gas or has captured part of Assad’s chemical weapons that the regime still holds.
Other reports also point to the probability that ISIS is using chemical warfare. It was accused by Kurdish officials of firing mortar shells with a mustard agent in clashes in northern Iraq.
The Obama administration on Friday expressed its concern over the possible use of chemical weapons.
A Rasmussen poll released Friday shows that the chaos in Syria has leaped into one of the major worries of Americans, spooked by ISIS beheadings and growing Islamic radical violence in the United States.
