Islamic State has created a chemical weapons cell in Syria made up of its top specialists from across its new self-titled caliphate, according to US officials.
Having fled both Mosul and Raqqa en masse due to intense military pressure, ISIS terrorists are said to be calling an area it controls within the Euphrates River Valley its de facto capital.
It is here, between Mayadin and the town of al Qaim across the border in Iraq, where the cell is working on its chemical arsenal.
A source in the US defence department said thousands of ISIS terrorists have converged in the area, which is where the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is said to be hiding.
The production faction is made up of chemistry experts from across Iraq and Syria, who have been brought together for the first time, an official told CNN.
With so many of its strongholds under huge pressure from coalition forces, the move is said to be a tactical switch to boost its ability to defend those areas.
Woman beheaded for witchcraft and sorcery
ISIS thugs beheaded a woman they claimed was a witch and a sorcerer.
The horrifying incident occurred in Deir Ezzor province, Syria.
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said she was butchered in front of children outside the village’s postal building.
US authorities monitoring the area said they have observed a growing number of ISIS chiefs abandoning Raqqa for the stretch of land south of the Euphrates River.
‘We know they have been moving a lot of their leadership out of Raqqa and we suspect much of their technical expertise and planning as well,’ US Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Pentagon spokesman, told CNN.
Colonel Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the US-led military coalition, told the site that ISIS have used what he called low-grade chemical agents in the past.
‘We know ISIS is willing to use chemical weapons. This is not something we want to see them get good at,’ he said.
The officials’ conclusions are backed by the fact there have been more than 15 chemical weapon attacks since April 14 in or around Mosul.
It comes as the terror group killed more than 50 people in an attack on government-held villages in Syria’s central Hama province and another incident of a woman getting beheaded for ‘witchecraft and sorcery ‘.
ISIS massacres 50 including children in Syria’s Hama province
Islamic State killed more than 50 people in an attack on two government-held villages in central Syria’s Hama province on Thursday, a monitor said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack on the villages of Aqareb and Al-Mabujeh killed at least 15 civilians and 27 pro-government fighters.
It said another 10 bodies were yet to be identified as government fighters or local residents.
IS also lost 15 fighters in the dawn attack on the two villages in the east of the province, the monitor said.
State news agency SANA reported the attack, giving a toll of 20 civilians killed in Aqareb, without mention of Al-Mabujeh.
It said most of the civilians had been beheaded and mutilated.
Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said at least three of the civilians killed in the attack, a man and his two children, had been executed.
It was unclear if others had also been executed or were killed in fighting.
The Observatory said IS had seized control of Aqareb and part of Al-Mabujeh.
‘Despite the arrival of reinforcements, government forces have been unable to repel the attack so far,’ Abdel Rahman said.
ISIS has attacked Al-Mabujeh before with devastating effect.
In March 2015, it executed at least 37 civilians in the village, whose population includes Sunni Muslims as well as those from the Ismaili sect and the Alawite community to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs.
During the same assault the group kidnapped at least 50 civilians, half of them women.
Control of central Hama province is divided between Syria’s government, rebel forces and ISIS, which is present mostly in the east of the area.
Source: ISIS creates ‘chemical weapons cell’ in Syria | Daily Mail Online
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