Tag Archives: Iraq

Russia calls for pact against chemical warfare by Islamic State

GENEVA (Reuters) – Russia said on Tuesday there was a growing threat from Islamic State militants waging chemical warfare in the Middle East and called for global negotiations on a new pact to combat what he called “a grave reality of our time”.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the appeal in a speech to the U.N.-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, a now largely moribund forum which clinched a major pact banning chemical weapons in the 1990s.

“However, we still face significant gaps related, in particular, to the use of chemicals for terrorist purposes,” Lavrov told the 65-member-state forum.

“This threat is getting extremely urgent in the light of newly revealed facts of repeated use of not only industrial toxic chemicals but also of full-fledged chemical warfare agents by ISIL (Islamic State) and other terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq,” he said.

Islamic State militants are believed to be responsible for sulfur mustard gas attacks in Syria and Iraq last year, the United States said last month.

A confidential report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) concluded that at least two people were exposed to sulfur mustard in Marea, north of Aleppo, in August.

“It does not leave any doubt that chemical terrorism is emerging not as an abstract threat, but a grave reality of our time which could and should be addressed,” Lavrov said.

“There is a growing danger of similar crimes being committed on the territory of Libya and Yemen,” he said.

Lavrov said there were reports of militant groups gaining access to scientific and technical documentation on the production of chemical weapons, seizing chemical plants and “engaging foreign specialists to help synthesize chemical warfare agents”, without giving details.

He said launching negotiations would revive the Conference on Disarmament, whose members include U.N. Security Council permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, but which has not been able to clinch any disarmament agreements since “the last decade of the 20th Century”.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

U.S. warns citizens to be ready to leave Iraq if Mosul dam collapses

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – The United States warned its citizens to be ready to leave Iraq in the event of what it has said could be a catastrophic collapse of the country’s largest hydro-electric dam near Mosul.

Iraqi officials have sought to play down the risk but Washington urged its citizens to make contingency plans now.

A U.S. security message cited estimates that Mosul, which is northern Iraq’s largest city and under control of Islamic State insurgents, could be inundated by as much as 70 feet of water within hours of the breach.

Cities downstream on the Tigris River such as Tikrit, Samarra and the Iraqi capital Baghdad could be inundated with smaller, but still significant levels within 24-72 hours.

“We have no specific information that indicates when a breach might occur, but out of an abundance of caution, we would like to underscore that prompt evacuation offers the most effective tool to save lives of the hundreds of thousands of people,” the security message said.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Sunday precautions were being taken, but described the likelihood of such a scenario as “extremely small”.

Islamic State seized the dam in August 2014, raising fears they might blow it up and unleash a wall of water on Mosul and Baghdad that could kill hundreds of thousands.

The dam was recaptured two weeks later by Iraqi government forces backed by air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition, but the disruption of maintenance operations has increased the likelihood of a breach.

An Italian company has been awarded a contract to make urgent repairs to the dam, which has suffered from structural flaws since its construction in the 1980s and requires constant grouting to maintain structural integrity.

Iraq’s minister of water resources said earlier this month there was only a “one in a thousand” chance the dam would collapse, and that the solution was to build a new dam or install a deep concrete support wall.

(Reporting by Isabel Coles; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Twin suicide bombing kills 70 in Baghdad’s deadliest attack this year

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A twin suicide bombing claimed by Islamic State killed 70 people in a Shi’ite district of Baghdad on Sunday in the deadliest attack inside the capital this year, as militants launched an assault on its western outskirts.

Police sources said the suicide bombers were riding motorcycles and blew themselves up in a crowded mobile phone market in Sadr City, wounding more than 100 people in addition to the dead.

A Reuters witness saw pools of blood on the ground with slippers, shoes and mobile phones at the site of the blasts, which was sealed off to prevent further attacks.

In a statement circulated online, Islamic State said it was responsible for the blasts: “Our swords will not cease to cut off the heads of the rejectionist polytheists, wherever they are,” it said, using derogatory terms for Shi’ite Muslims.

Iraqi forces backed by airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition have driven Islamic State back in the western Anbar province recently and are preparing for an offensive to retake the northern city of Mosul.

But the militants are still able to strike outside territory they control, often targeting members of Iraq’s Shi’ite majority, most recently on Thursday when two Islamic State suicide bombers killed 15 people at a mosque in the capital.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the attacks were in response to Islamic State’s recent defeats: “This gang targeted civilians after it lost the initiative and its dregs fled the battlefield before our proud fighters,” he said on his official Facebook page.

At dawn on Sunday, suicide bombers and gunmen attacked Iraqi security forces in Abu Ghraib, seizing positions in a grain silo and a cemetery, and killing at least 17 members of the security forces, officials said.

Security officials blamed Islamic State, and a news agency that supports the group said it had launched a “wide attack” in Abu Ghraib, 25 km (15 miles) from the center of Baghdad and next to the international airport.

Footage circulated online by the Amaq news agency appeared to show Islamic State fighters crouching behind dirt berms and launching the attack with automatic rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Reuters could not verify the video’s authenticity.

Security forces had mostly regained control by Sunday evening but officials said there were still clashes.

Baghdad-based security analyst Jasim al-Bahadli said the assault suggested it was premature to declare that Islamic State was losing the initiative in Iraq.

“Government forces must do a better job repelling attacks launched by Daesh. What happened today could be a setback for the security forces,” he said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

COUNTER OFFENSIVE

Army and police sources said the militants had attacked from the nearby Islamic State-controlled areas of Garma and Falluja, driving Humvees and pickup trucks fixed with machine guns.

A curfew was imposed as a regiment of Iraq’s elite counter-terrorism forces was mobilized to retake the silo in Abu Ghraib and prevent the militants approaching the nearby airport, security officials said.

Iraqi army helicopters bombarded Islamic State positions in the and Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Saad Maan said at least 20 militants had been killed in the government’s counter offensive.

Fighters from the Hashid Shaabi, a coalition of mainly Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias, were mobilized to Abu Ghraib to reinforce regular government forces in the area, said Jawad al-Tulaibawi, a local Hashid commander.

Powerful Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr also called on fighters loyal to him to be on alert to protect Baghdad. Shi’ite militias like Sadr’s ‘Peace Brigades’ were seen as a bulwark against Islamic State’s sweeping advance in 2014 which threatened Iraq’s capital and its most sacred Shi’ite shrines.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad and Ali Abdelaty in Cairo; Writing by Stephen Kalin and Isabel Coles; Editing by Ros Russell)

Officials investigating another suspected case of ISIS using chemical weapons

Officials are investigating if the Islamic State used chemical weapons in a recent attack in Iraq.

The Kurdistan Regional Security Council and officials from the United States-led coalition against the Islamic State are looking into Thursday’s events, the council tweeted on Friday.

According to the council, Islamic State militants used homemade rockets in an attack on the town of Sinjar, which is located about 80 miles west of Mosul in northern Iraq.

Dozens of civilians and Peshmerga military forces subsequently vomited, experienced nausea or had trouble breathing and received treatment, the council tweeted. It did not say if anyone died.

Officials did not specify which chemical the Islamic State is believed to have used in the attack.

If the investigation does confirm a chemical weapon was used, the council said it would be the eighth time that the Islamic State used the substances in their attacks against Peshmerga forces.

The council tweeted last March that it believed the Islamic State used chlorine in a car bomb attack in Iraq in January 2015, saying soil and clothing samples contained evidence of its use.

The council has also tweeted it has evidence the Islamic State used mustard gas in prior attacks, saying some 35 Peshmerga forces were exposed during an August 2015 shelling near Erbil, Iraq.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has also said it was concerned about chlorine gas being used in various attacks in Syrian villages in 2014.

An OPCW fact-finding mission into the attacks in Syria did not address who used the chlorine.

More than 190 countries have agreed to a 1997 United Nations treaty on chemical weapons, which prohibits their use or production and calls for nations to destroy their existing arsenals.

Trapped between Iraq frontlines, refugees illustrate their predicament

ERBIL (Reuters) – They are trapped between two worlds – one they want to leave and the other to which they are denied entry.

For three months, more than 500 men, women and children have been living in no-man’s land in northern Iraq, caught in the crossfire between Kurdish forces and Islamic State.

Their dilemma illustrates the wider predicament in which Sunni Arabs find themselves in the new order emerging from the conflict, which has displaced millions and is redrawing internal boundaries in both Iraq and Syria.

Stranded between frontlines in the Sinjar area, the group of Sunni Arabs wants to leave Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate, but is being denied passage by the Kurds, who have staked out their territory in the north and fear infiltration.

In telephone interviews with Reuters, three men from the same village, including an elder, explained that if they turned back Islamic State would kill them for trying to escape.

With nowhere to go, the group has settled around 500 meters from Kurdish positions, living in tents made out of empty sacks and taking cover in makeshift trenches when Islamic State fires mortars at the peshmerga.

“The mortars are better than hunger,” said 48-year old farmer Mahmoud. “You can hide from mortars, but the hunger won’t go away.”

Cold, malnutrition and lack of medical care claimed the lives of a child and an elderly woman in the winter months, and two men were killed when they stepped on a mine, the three villagers said. Another infant died during childbirth last week, according to several members of the group.

Some are suffering from skin conditions because they are not able to wash, and the water they drink from wells in the no-man’s land is dirty, so they lay out containers to collect rain when it falls.

For the first two months food was smuggled to them from inside Islamic State territory, but the militants have now mined the route. They now depend on the goodwill of Arab tribes living on the Kurdish side of the frontline who recently bought them basic supplies the peshmerga allow through. They supplement that with edible plants that grow around them.

The peshmerga occasionally give bread from their own provisions to the displaced children when they are hungry and wander up to the berm, but say they cannot let anyone through the front line unless they receive orders from above.

Their commander, Fareeq Jamal, said it was not his decision who was excluded, but “anyone who is present in the area where terrorists are present is under suspicion”.

The Kurds have managed to keep their autonomous region relatively safe from Islamic State, but the militants have carried out several bombings in the region’s capital since 2014 and security services say they have thwarted other plots.

At a briefing in Geneva last week, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights urged Kurdish authorities to ensure the group’s safety and access to basic humanitarian aid.

“If the Kurdish authorities have security concerns about this particular group, they should vet people on an individual basis in a safe location, in full transparency and in accordance with the law,” said Rupert Colville.

“If any wrongdoing is found to have taken place, those responsible should be charged and tried according to the law. Where it is found that an individual has not committed any crime and there are no legitimate security concerns which warrant his or her continued detention under the law, then he or she should be immediately released.”

The Kurdish region has taken in around half of the 3.3 million Iraqis who have been internally displaced over the past two years, putting huge strain on its resources. The number will only increase as Kurdish forces take on Islamic State in their remaining strongholds.

The group of villagers has been stranded since Kurdish forces routed Islamic State from the Sinjar area last November and they fled their village of Golat.

Even if they could return there, the displaced Arabs say they are too afraid of being attacked by local Yazidis who accuse them of complicity in the atrocities perpetrated against their community by Islamic State.

The Yazidi minority was hounded by Islamic State militants who consider them devil-worshippers and killed and captured thousands as they overran the Sinjar area in the summer of 2014.

“You know what Daesh did to them,” said Mahmoud. “As far as they’re concerned, any (Sunni) Arab is either Daesh or related to Daesh.”

Jabbar Yawar, the secretary general of the peshmerga ministry, said the entire village had sided with Islamic State, and there might be a backlash from Yazidis.

The displaced Arabs insist only one person from their village joined Islamic State and say he is now in Mosul. “If there were a Daesh (member) amongst us we would execute him ourselves,” said Mahmoud. “Each one of us would put a bullet through his head”.

(editing by Janet McBride)

Study finds Islamic State using more child soldiers, 89 die in 13 months

At least 89 children have died in the past 13 months while acting on behalf of the Islamic State, according to a new study suggesting the group has more child soldiers than previously thought.

The study, published Thursday by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, says that the Islamic State “is mobilizing children and youth at an increasing and unprecedented rate.”

It focuses on the 89 children and teenagers who the Islamic State has publicly eulogized as martyrs since January 1, 2015, shining a light on how the group uses children in its operations.

The study found children are largely being given the same roles as their adult counterparts and “are fighting alongside, rather than in lieu of” men. The findings suggest the Islamic State’s “systematic use of children is more widespread than previously imagined,” the report states.

The Islamic State does not publicize the ages of the deceased children, so the researchers had to rely on photographs to determine their approximate ages. They found 60 percent of the child soldiers were believed to be adolescents (ages 12 to 16), 6 percent appeared to be pre-adolescent (ages 8 to 12) and the remaining 34 percent seemed to be older adolescents (ages 16 to 21).

Many of the children died setting off vehicle bombs (39 percent) or as soldiers on the battlefield (33 percent). Another 18 percent died in “inghimasi” attacks, where a mix of adult and child soldiers shoot their way into enemy territory before blowing themselves up. The others were killed while working as propagandists among Islamic State units or in attacks against civilians.

The study found that 87 percent of the children were purportedly killed in Iraq or Syria, where the group controls large portions of land, while the others died in Libya, Nigeria and Yemen.

Researchers acknowledge the data isn’t all-encompassing — they noted the Islamic State did not publicly release photographic propaganda about every one of its suicide attacks last month, for example — but they maintain the report is the most comprehensive analysis of its kind to date.

They also warned that the Islamic State utilization of child soldiers appears to be on the rise, saying 11 were killed in suicide missions last month compared to just six during January 2015.

A spokesman for the United States-led coalition against the Islamic State has said Iraqi forces have regained significant amounts of territory the insurgency once held in Iraq and Syria, and airstrikes recently destroyed “significant amounts” of cash the group used to fund its operations.

The report suggests a potential link between recent military pressure and the uptick in deaths.

“It seems plausible that, as military pressure against the Islamic State has increased in recent months, such operations — especially those of the inghimasi variety — are becoming more tactically attractive,” it states. “They represent an effective form of psychological warfare. … We can expect that as their implementation increases, so too will the reported rate of child and youth deaths.”

Missing radioactive material found dumped in south Iraq

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Radioactive material that went missing in Iraq has been found dumped near a petrol station in the southern town of Zubair, officials said on Sunday, ending speculation it could be acquired by Islamic State and used as a weapon.

The officials told Reuters the material, stored in a protective case the size of a laptop computer, was undamaged and there were no concerns about radiation.

Reuters reported last week that Iraq had been searching for the material since it was stolen in November from a storage facility belonging to U.S. oilfield services company Weatherford near the southern city of Basra.

It was not immediately clear how the device, owned by Swiss inspections group SGS, ended up in Zubair, around 9 miles southwest of Basra.

“A passer-by found the radioactive device dumped in Zubair and immediately informed security forces which went with a special radiation prevention team and retrieved the device,” the chief of the security panel within Basra provincial council, Jabbar al-Saidi, told Reuters.

“After initial checking I can confirm the device is intact 100 percent and there is absolutely no concern of radiation.”

A security official close to the investigation said it had been established soon after the material was stolen that it was being kept in Zubair and controls had been tightened to prevent it being taken out of the town.

“After failing to take it out of the town, the perpetrators decided to dump it,” the security official said. “I assure you it is only a matter of time before we arrest those who stole the radioactive device.”

The material, which uses gamma rays to test flaws in materials used for oil and gas pipelines in a process called industrial gamma radiography, is owned by Istanbul-based SGS Turkey, according to the document and officials.

The material is classed as a Category 2 radioactive source by the IAEA, meaning that if not managed properly it could cause permanent injury to a person in close proximity to it for minutes or hours, and could be fatal to someone exposed for a period of hours to days.

SGS and Weatherford have both denied responsibility for the disappearance of the material last year.

(Additional reporting by Aref Mohammed in Basra; Writing by Isabel Coles; editing by Susan Thomas and Digby Lidstone)

Turkey blames Kurdish militants for Ankara bomb, vows reprisals

ANKARA/ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu blamed a Syrian Kurdish militia fighter working with Kurdish militants inside Turkey for a suicide car bombing that killed 28 people in the capital Ankara, and he vowed retaliation in both Syria and Iraq.

A car laden with explosives detonated next to military buses as they waited at traffic lights near Turkey’s armed forces’ headquarters, parliament and government buildings in the administrative heart of Ankara late on Wednesday.

Davutoglu said the attack was clear evidence that the YPG, a Syrian Kurdish militia that has been supported by the United States in the fight against Islamic State in northern Syria, was a terrorist organization and that Turkey, a NATO member, expected cooperation from its allies in combating the group.

Within hours, Turkish warplanes bombed bases in northern Iraq of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state and which Davutoglu accused of collaborating in the car bombing.

Turkey’s armed forces also shelled YPG positions in northern Syria on Thursday, a security source said. Davutoglu said the artillery fire would continue and promised that those responsible for the Ankara attack would “pay the price”.

“Yesterday’s attack was directly targeting Turkey and the perpetrator is the YPG and the divisive terrorist organization PKK. All necessary measures will be taken against them,” Davutoglu said in a televised speech.

President Tayyip Erdogan also said initial findings suggested the Syrian Kurdish militia and the PKK were behind the bombing and said that 14 people had been detained.

The political arm of the YPG, denied involvement in the bombing, while a senior member of the PKK said he did not know who was responsible.

The attack was the latest in a series of bombings in the past year mostly blamed on Islamic State militants.

Turkey is getting dragged ever deeper into the war in neighboring Syria and is trying to contain some of the fiercest violence in decades in its predominantly Kurdish southeast.

The YPG militia, regarded by Ankara as a hostile insurgent force deeply linked to the PKK, has taken advantage in recent weeks of a major Syrian army offensive around the northern city of Aleppo, backed by Russian air strikes, to seize ground from Syrian rebels near the Turkish border.

That has alarmed Turkey, which fears the advances will stoke Kurdish separatist ambitions at home. It has been bombarding YPG positions in an effort to stop them taking the town of Azaz, the last stronghold of Turkish-backed Syrian rebels north of Aleppo before the Turkish frontier.

Hundreds of Syrian rebels with weapons and vehicles have re-entered Syria from Turkey over the last week to reinforce insurgents fending off the Kurdish-led assault on Azaz, rebel sources said on Thursday.

TENSIONS WITH WASHINGTON

The co-leader of the YPG’s political wing denied that the affiliated YPG perpetrated the Ankara bombing and said Turkey was using the attack to justify an escalation in fighting in northern Syria.

“We are completely refuting that. …Davutoglu is preparing for something else because they are shelling us as you know for the past week,” Saleh Muslim told Reuters by telephone.

Washington’s support of the YPG – it views the group as a useful ally in the fight against Islamic State – has strained relations with Turkey. Both Erdogan and Davutoglu have called on the United States to cut ties with the insurgents.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said Washington was not in a position to either confirm or deny Turkey’s charge the YPG was behind the attack. He also called on Turkey to stop shelling the YPG.

Turkey has said its shelling of YPG positions is a response, within its rules of engagement, to hostile fire coming across the border into Turkey, something Saleh Muslim also denied.

“I can assure you not even one bullet is fired by the YPG into Turkey … They don’t consider Turkey an enemy,” he said.

The co-leader of the PKK umbrella group, Cemil Bayik, was quoted by the Firat news agency as saying he did not know who was responsible for the Ankara bombing. But the attack, he said, could be an answer to “massacres in Kurdistan”, referring to the Kurdish region spanning parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

Turkey has been battling PKK militants in its own southeast, where a 2-1/2 year ceasefire collapsed last July and pitched the region into its worst bloodshed since the 1990s. Six soldiers were killed and one wounded on Thursday when a remote-controlled handmade bomb hit their vehicle, the military said.

WARNING TO RUSSIA

Davutoglu named the suicide bomber as Salih Necar, born in 1992 and from the Hasakah region of northern Syria, and said he was a member of the YPG.

A senior security official said the alleged bomber had entered Turkey from Syria in July 2014, although he may have crossed the border illegally multiple times before that, and said he had had contact with the PKK and Syrian intelligence.

Davutoglu also accused the Syrian government of a hand in the Ankara bombing and warned Russia, whose air strikes in northern Syria have helped the YPG to advance, against using the Kurdish militant group against Turkey.

“I’d like to warn Russia, which is giving air support to the YPG in its advance on Azaz, not to use this terrorist group against the innocent people of Syria and Turkey,” he said.

“Russia condemned yesterday’s attack, but it is not enough. All those who intend to use terrorist organizations as proxies should know that this game of terror will turn around like a boomerang and hit them first.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told a teleconference with reporters that the Kremlin condemned the bombing “in the strongest possible terms”.

(Additional reporting by Seyhmus Cakan in Diyarbakir, Daren Butler and Ece Toksabay in Istanbul, Orhan Coskun in Ankara, Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow and Lesley Wroughton in Washington; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Mark Heinrich, Andrew Heavens and Andrew Hay)

United States wants NATO to step up fight against Islamic State

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The United States is pressing NATO to play a bigger role against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, putting Washington at odds with Germany and France which fear the strategy would risk confrontation with the alliance’s old Cold War foe Russia.

All 28 NATO allies are already part of a 66-nation anti-Islamic State coalition, so the United States is looking to NATO as an institution to bring its equipment, training and the expertise it gained leading a coalition in Afghanistan.

“It is worth exploring how NATO, as NATO, could make an appropriate contribution, leveraging for example its unique capabilities, such as force generation,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said after meeting allies at NATO headquarters in Brussels last week and referring to NATO’s know-how in drumming-up troops, planes and ships from allies.

Seeking to recapture the Islamic State strongholds of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, Washington wants a bigger European response to the chaos and failing states near Europe’s borders.

Carter’s call for NATO’s help came as defense ministers from the anti-Islamic State coalition met last week at NATO headquarters in Brussels for the first time, albeit with NATO insignia removed from the walls.

Despite support from Britain, the U.S. push has not been received well by France and Germany.

Given Russia’s concerns over NATO expansion in eastern Europe, Paris and Berlin are worried that deeper NATO involvement in Syria could be taken by Moscow as a provocation that the alliance is seeking to extend its influence.

As the Russian-backed Syrian government advance nears NATO’s southeastern border, growing hostility between Russia and Turkey only makes some members of the alliance more reluctant, diplomats say.

Notwithstanding an agreement between Russia and the United States to avoid accidental military air incidents, France and Germany worry Russia’s targeting of opposition groups other than Islamic State increases the risks.

“NATO and Russia would not be fighting a common enemy,” a NATO diplomat said.

NON-COMBAT OPTIONS

Carter has sought to distinguish between Syria’s civil war and the fight against Islamic State, saying the campaign against the militant group will go on regardless, and has pushed allies to accelerate their efforts.

In that vein, Washington tested waters by making a request for NATO to provide its surveillance AWACS aircraft to the anti-Islamic State coalition fighting militants in Syria.

Germany pushed back on the AWACS request. That has forced a compromise by which NATO will send the planes to allied countries so as to free-up allies to send more of their own equipment to fight Islamic State in Syria, diplomats said.

France also sought assurances that the AWACS request did not mean NATO as an institution was being involved more deeply in the anti-Islamic State coalition.

Still, NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Philip Breedlove said planning for a bigger alliance role was “a natural shift … a natural evolvement of the thinking.”

“All our nations are under greater pressure, so this is just beginning. There is no detail but there are lots of opportunities that are being considered,” he said.

NATO involvement in Syria could help answer critics who say the alliance has watched passively as Russia has widened its role there. It could also address concerns expressed by southern allies, such as Spain, Italy and Portugal, that NATO does not have a strategy to address risks on the Mediterranean, the entry point for huge numbers of people fleeing conflict in the Middle East.

British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said NATO might not yet be ready to move ahead along the lines suggested by Washington, “but the very fact that we brought together 45 members of the anti-IS coalition, inside NATO headquarters, shows you that we want to see a stronger governance of the coalition.”

“We want to be able to measure the progress of the campaign and to review it more regularly,” Fallon told Reuters.

For the moment, discussions on various options include more NATO training of Iraqi troops and police, as well as strengthening government departments in areas taken back from Islamic State, according a U.S. defense official.

The United States has made clear it does not see a role for Western combat troops. “Territory retaken from ISIL (Islamic State) has to be occupied and governed by people who are from the area and want to live there,” Carter said.

(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart in Washington and Sabine Siebold in Berlin; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Radioactive material stolen in Iraq raises security fears

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq is searching for “highly dangerous” radioactive material whose theft last year has raised fears among Iraqi officials that it could be used as a weapon if acquired by Islamic State.

Baghdad reported the stolen material to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in November but has not requested assistance to recover it, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Wednesday.

The material, stored in a protective case the size of a laptop computer, went missing from a storage facility near the southern city of Basra belonging to U.S. oilfield services company Weatherford <WFT.N>, an environment ministry document seen by Reuters showed and security, environmental and provincial officials confirmed.

A spokesman for Iraq’s environment ministry said he could not discuss the issue, citing national security concerns.

Weatherford said in a statement that it was not responsible or liable for the theft. “We do not own, operate or control sources or the bunker where the sources are stored,” it said.

The material, which uses gamma rays to test flaws in materials used for oil and gas pipelines in a process called industrial gamma radiography, is owned by Istanbul-based SGS Turkey, according to the document and officials.

An SGS official in Iraq declined to comment and referred Reuters to its Turkish headquarters, which did not respond to phone calls and emails.

The U.S. State Department said it was aware of the reports but has seen no sign that Islamic State or other militant groups have acquired it.

The environment ministry document, dated Nov. 30 and addressed to the ministry’s Centre for Prevention of Radiation, describes “the theft of a highly dangerous radioactive source of Ir-192 with highly radioactive activity belonging to SGS from a depot belonging to Weatherford in the Rafidhia area of Basra province”.

A senior environment ministry official based in Basra, who declined to be named as he is not authorized to speak publicly, told Reuters the device contained up to 10 grams (0.35 ounces) of Ir-192 “capsules”, a radioactive isotope of iridium also used to treat cancer.

The IAEA said the material is classed as a Category 2 radioactive source, meaning that if not managed properly it could cause permanent injury to a person in close proximity to it for minutes or hours, and could be fatal to someone exposed for a period of hours to days.

How harmful exposure can be is determined by a number of factors such as the material’s strength and age, which Reuters could not immediately determine. The ministry document said the material posed a risk of bodily and environmental harm as well as a national security threat.

DIRTY BOMB FEAR

Large quantities of Ir-192 have gone missing before in the United States, Britain and other countries, stoking fears among security officials that it could be used to make a dirty bomb.

A dirty bomb combines nuclear material with conventional explosives to contaminate an area with radiation, in contrast to a nuclear weapon, which uses nuclear fission to trigger a vastly more powerful blast.

“We are afraid the radioactive element will fall into the hands of Daesh,” said a senior security official with knowledge of the theft, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

“They could simply attach it to explosives to make a dirty bomb,” said the official, who works at the interior ministry and spoke on condition of anonymity as he is also not authorized to speak publicly.

There was no indication the material had come into the possession of Islamic State, which seized territory in Iraq and Syria in 2014 but does not control areas near Basra.

A State Department spokesman declined to comment on whether the missing material might be suitable for use in a dirty bomb.

The security official, based in Baghdad, told Reuters there were no immediate suspects for the theft. But the official said the initial inquiry suggested the perpetrators had specific knowledge of the material and the facility. “No broken locks, no smashed doors and no evidence of forced entry,” he said.

An operations manager for Iraqi security firm Taiz, which was contracted to protect the facility, declined to comment, citing instructions from Iraqi security authorities.

A spokesman for Basra operations command, responsible for security in Basra province, said army, police and intelligence forces were working “day and night” to locate the material.

The army and police have responsibility for security in the country’s south, where Iranian-backed Shi’ite Muslim militias and criminal gangs also operate.

POLLUTION RISK

Iraqi forces are battling Islamic State in the country’s north and west, backed by a U.S.-led coalition. The Sunni Muslim militant group has been accused of using chemical weapons on more than one occasion over the past few years.

The closest area fully controlled by Islamic State is more than 300 miles north of Basra in the western province of Anbar. Islamic State controls no territory in the predominantly Shi’ite southern provinces but has claimed bomb attacks there, including one that killed 10 people in October in the district where the Weatherford facility is located.

Besides the risk of a dirty bomb, the radioactive material could cause harm simply by being left exposed in a public place for several days, said David Albright, a physicist and president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.

“If they left it in some crowded place, that would be more of the risk, if they kept it together but without shielding,” he said. “Certainly it’s not insignificant. You could cause some panic with this. They would want to get this back.”

The senior environmental official said authorities were worried that whoever stole the material would mishandle it, leading to radioactive pollution of “catastrophic proportions”.

A second senior environment ministry official, also based in Basra, said counter-radiation teams had begun inspecting oil sites, scrapyards and border crossings to locate the device after an emergency task force raised the alarm on Nov. 13.

Two Basra provincial government officials said they were directed on Nov. 25 to coordinate with local hospitals. “We instructed hospitals in Basra to be alert to any burn cases caused by radioactivity and inform security forces immediately,” said one.

(Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul, Jonathan S. Landay and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Pravin Char/Mark Heinrich)