Mustard agent used in IS Syria shelling in 2015: watchdog

The world’s chemical weapons watchdog said Wednesday mustard agent was used in a 2015 Islamic State group attack in northern Syria in which at least 20 people were injured.

The then opposition-held town of Marea, near the Turkish border in Aleppo province, came under shelling from areas under IS control on September 1 and 3 that year, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said.

“The town of Marea was subject to shelling with both conventional munitions as well as projectiles filled with chemicals,” it said in a statement, based on a report by its Fact-Finding Mission which probes chemical attacks in Syria.

The FFM’s report said there was “reasonable grounds” to believe that on September 1 in Marea sulfur mustard, a blistering agent, was used as a weapon.

Around noon that day “more than 30 projectiles targeted residential areas in Marea from surrounding locations under the control of ISIL,” the FFM said, using another acronym for the IS group.

Approximately half of these projectiles were reportedly filled with toxic chemicals and emitted an odour.

“In some of the targeted locations, a black substance was observed, and in others, a yellow powder was observed,” the FFM said.

“Individuals exposed to the substances developed blisters a few hours after exposure,” it added, saying 20 people suffered from suffocation, redness of the eyes, and headaches and were taken to a field hospital in Marea.

Findings for the September 3 attack however were inconclusive, the Hague-based OPCW said.

The FFM’s report comes in the wake of a 2015 finding that mustard gas was used in an attack on Marea on August 21, 2015, killing at least one infant.

The OPCW at the time said chemical weapons were used by “non-state actors”, but activists and a monitoring group said it was clear that IS was behind the attack.

The war in Syria has killed more than half a million people and spurred the largest conflict-induced displacement since World War II.

President Bashar al-Assad’s regime too has been accused of using chemical weapons in the conflict, charges Damascus denies.

Syria is under pressure from Western countries to come clean over its alleged chemical weapons use, and was stripped of its OPCW voting rights in April last year after a probe blamed it for further poison gas attacks.