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Iraq Warns UN of ISIS Militants Seizing Ex-Chemical Weapons Store - Reports

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Iraqi authorities warn UN that militants from The Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) seized a former chemical weapons storage in the province of Muthanna, AP reported Wednesday.

MOSCOW, July 9 (RIA Novosti) – Iraqi authorities warn UN that militants from The Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) seized a former chemical weapons storage in the province of Muthanna, AP reported Wednesday.

According to the news agency, back on June 11 the militants took over the facility where over 2.5 thousand chemical rockets and warfare agents were stored.

Iraqi ambassador to UN Mohamed Ali Alhakim sent UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon a letter saying that radicals seized the site and the weapons of the servicemen that protected the storage. Alhakim underlined that a total of 13 out of 41 bunkers with sodium cyanide, which is used to extract a warfare agent tabun, were captured.

According to the latest UN report on the chemical weapons in Iraq, issued a decade ago, Muthanna site was declared outdated and not fit for making effective chemical weapons. The facility was actively used during the war between Iraq and Iran in 1980-1988. The US media claim that such war gases as sarin, mustard gas and nerve agents of VX class were produced there.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) is a Sunni group that has been fighting in Syria against the country’s president, Bashar Assad, and launched an offensive in Iraq this June, taking over large parts of the country, with the goal of seizing Baghdad.

On June 29, the group declared itself a Caliphate and announced the group’s rebranding as the Islamic State (IS). The IS claims religious authority over all Muslims and aspires to bring much of the Muslim-inhabited world under its direct political control.

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