Iraq said yesterday it had put its Tikrit offensive on hold and senior officials called for more air strikes to dislodge Islamic State militants, while a Kurdish officer said his forces were exposed to two further chlorine gas attacks by the insurgents.
General Aziz Waisi told journalists the insurgents used chlorine in a December attack on his military police brigade in the Sinjar mountain area, and twice during a January offensive west of Mosul, including a January 23 attack described by Kurdish authorities on Saturday.
Waisi said a number of military police were taken to hospital, where blood tests indicated they had inhaled chlorine gas released by the bombs.
“When it exploded we realised it was not a normal smoke because it caused unconsciousness and vomiting,” he said, describing one incident, when peshmerga blew up a vehicle driven by a suspected would-be suicide bomber.
He declined to say whether samples from the two previously unreported attacks had been tested at an international laboratory along with those from the January 23 attack.
The Dutch-based Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said over the weekend it had not had a request from Iraq to investigate claims of chemical weapons use and said the group could not immediately verify the claims.
When it exploded it caused unconsciousness and vomiting
Iraq’s Kurds were the victims of the deadliest chemical attack of modern times when Saddam Hussein’s air force bombed the town of Halabja in 1988, killing at least 5,000 people.
In Tikrit, military officials said there was no fighting on Monday. Islamic State insurgents who control large parts of north and west Iraq and territory in neighbouring Syria have managed to hold onto central districts of Saddam’s home city and have laid explosives to hold up the advancing forces.
The offensive by Iraqi security forces and mainly Shi’ite militia is their largest yet against Islamic State, but the campaign stalled on Friday after they pushed into Tikrit last week.
Government forces are in control of most of the northern Qadisiya district as well as the southern and western outskirts of the city, trapping the militants in an area bounded by the river that runs along Tikrit’s eastern edge.
“We need air support from any force that can work with us against IS,” Deputy Minister of Defence Ibrahim al-Lami told Reuters, declining to say whether he meant from the US-led coalition or Iran, which is playing a role in the assault.
The US-led coalition, which has launched air strikes on Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria since last August, has been conspicuously absent from the offensive. Powerful militia commander Hadi al-Amiri, head of the Shi’ite paramilitary Badr Organisation, said earlier in the offensive that militia victories before the Tikrit battle had been won without coalition air support.
Interior Minister Mohammed al-Ghaban said authorities had put a temporary halt to the offensive in Tikrit, capital of the mainly Sunni Muslim Salahuddin province.