Is there a war crime or atrocity that ISIS hasn’t committed?
An Iraqi unit with U.S. and Australian advisers has been hit by mustard gas by ISIS forces.
Six soldiers suffered breathing problems and another 19 were forced to seek treatment after ISIS militants launched the gas attack against the US-backed unit in the city of Mosul, northern Iraq.
It is the second chemical attack against the Iraqi troop in two days, after an officer with the anti-terrorism unit said ISIS fired a rocket loaded with chlorine at the al-Abar neighborhood in western Mosul.
Gas masks and other equipment is now being distributed to forces in case of future gas attacks.
The allied Iraqi forces are battling ISIS and local officials say more than half of western Mosul has been retaken from the extremists.
ISIS was driven out of the eastern half of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in January.
But hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are still trapped in the ISIS-held parts of the city which could turn into the worst humanitarian ‘catastrophe’ in the war against the militants, the United Nations warned on Tuesday.
‘If there is a siege and hundreds of thousands of people don’t have water and don´t have food, they will be at enormous risk,’ U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq Lise Grande told Reuters in a telephone interview.
‘We could be facing a humanitarian catastrophe, perhaps the worst in the entire conflict,’ she added.
Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq, was captured by the ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim fighters in mid 2014.
Iraqi government forces have taken back most of it in a U.S.-backed offensive launched in October, including the half that lies east of the Tigris river.
The militants are now surrounded in the northwestern quarter including the historic Old City, using booby traps, sniper and mortar fire against the assailants.