Last Friday's
triple chlorine-gas suicide attacks that hit Fallujah, Ramadi
and Amiria, almost simultaneously, sent shockwaves all over
Iraq, raising the specter of further widespread use of chemical
weapons by terrorist groups in Iraq and the entire region. The
brutal attack by suspected al Qaeda suicide bombers also sent
a chilling message to Sunni tribal leaders who have rebuffed
the Islamic terrorists. By blowing up three consecutive following
trucks loaded with chlorine-laden explosives in three of al
Qaeda‘s notorious hotbeds in the western Iraqi Anbar province:
Falluja, Amiria and Ramadi, the terrorists signaled their determination
to bring their Jihad onto new terrifying horizons. In all three
attacks, eight people died and over 500 suffered severe toxic
casualties. The attacks were coordinated, so that all three
happened within half an hour, causing chaos among rescue services,
coping with chemical injuries.
In fact, last week's attacks were not the first in Iraq, in
which terrorist used chemical weapons material: The first attack
happened on January 28 in Ramadi, when several trucks, each
containing small quantities of explosives mixed with chlorine
gas exploded among a crowd, killing 16 people and wounding several
dozens. Less than one month later, a similar attack was staged
in Baghdad, in which five people died and over a hundred were
wounded. That same day US forces found two chlorine factories
in Karma and Fallujah in Al Anbar province. The troops discovered
a pickup truck and three other vehicles that were being prepared
as car bombs. But this capture did not prevent last Friday's
brutal attack.
While
the use of chlorine gas in suicide terror attacks seemed
entirely novel, many groups, especially in the Israeli-Palestinian
arena, have attempted to combine suicide attacks with
crude chemical and biological components.
Chlorine gas was among the first chemical weapons to be used
as a weapon in modern warfare. On April 15, 1915, German forces
released about 160 tons of chlorine gas into the wind near the
Belgian village of Ypres. The clouds of the gas drifted into
Allied forces, killing some 5,000 soldiers. Two days later,
another chlorine attack at the same village killed thousands
more soldiers.
Later the Germans developed a new class of chemical weapon
called nerve agents, which interfere with the body's transmission
of nerve impulses. During the 1930s and 1940s, agents such as
Tabun, Sarin, and Soman were created, members of what is known
as the G series of nerve agents. Among these, Sarin is particularly
lethal; a small amount absorbed through the skin can kill a
man within two minutes. Developed in Germany as a chemical weapon
by Gerhard Schrader and others for the Nazis in 1938, Sarin
has no color and no odor and is difficult to detect by regular
means. It is 500 times more deadly than the traditional killer
agent, cyanide. When Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurdish town
of Halabja in northern Iraq on March 1988 he used sarin. Many
thousand innocent people died a horrifying death.
Chemical warfare research continued during the Cold War tensions
in the 1950s. During this time, military chemists in the United
Kingdom and then in the United States adapted insecticides to
produce the most lethal chemical agent then known. The agent
was code named VX. The potency of VX was accidentally demonstrated
in 1968, when a testing accident at the VX manufacturing plant
in Dugway, Utah killed over 6,000 sheep. Later, an examination
of caves in Afghanistan that were used as strongholds by the
terrorist group al Qaeda has revealed evidence of stores of
Sarin and VX.
A first officially recorded terrorist attack with chemical
weapons material happened in Japan in the early nineties. In
April of 1990, the group used a fleet of three trucks equipped
with aerosol sprayers to release liquid botulinum toxin on the
Imperial Palace, the Diet and the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, and
two U.S. naval bases and the airport in Narita. Four years later,
in 1994, a secret group known under the name of Aum Shinrikyo
("Supreme Truth") used a van equipped with a Sarin
dispenser to attempt to kill three judges hearing a case against
the group. The judges, who all lived in the same dormitory,
survived the attack when the wind blew the Sarin away from the
building, but seven people in the neighborhood were killed.
In the United States, chemical terrorism was first discovered
when Ramzi Yousef added cyanide to the explosives which he used
to detonate beneath the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993.
Six people were killed and 1,000 were injured. The cyanide was
destroyed in the explosion. If it had survived the blast, the
casualty count would have been higher.
But then the actions of the notorious Aum Shinrikyo group drew
widespread attention to chemical terror hazards after it perpetrated
the infamous Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995. In
five coordinated attacks, the conspirators released sarin gas
on several lines of the Tokyo Metro system. The attack was directed
against trains passing through Kasumigaseki and Nagaracho neighborhoods,
home to the Japanese government offices. The message sent was
crystal clear: Years before the events of 9/11, Aum Shinrikyo
had already unleashed fears of extreme "mega terror".
Led by a religious mystic, Shoko Asahara a messianic figure
the Aum Shinrikyo cult claimed to be a reincarnation of the
Hindu god Shiva, and promised to lead his followers to salvation
when impending Armageddon arrived. And Australia was not to
be spared either. In 1997, a serial bomber detonated several
chemical bombs containing chlorine across Sidney’s eastern
suburbs that injured some three dozen people.
But while the use of chlorine gas in suicide terror attacks
seemed entirely novel, many groups, especially in the Israeli-Palestinian
arena, have attempted to combine suicide attacks with crude
chemical and biological components for some time.
According to Israeli intelligence officials Hamas had first
added pesticides and other poisonous chemicals to homemade bombs
in 1997. The Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported on December
9, 2001, that a bomb exploding in Jerusalem during the previous
week contained nails and bolts that had been dipped into rat
poison, most of which, however, burned in the explosion. Furthermore,
indictments against Palestinian terrorist operatives revealed
that both Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) attempted
to use cyanide for terrorist attacks against Israelis on several
occasions. According to an indictment against Abbas Sayyid,
who headed Hamas’ military arm in Tulkarm, Sayyid planned
to use cyanide in the attacks on the Sharon shopping mall and
the Park Hotel in Netanya in May 2001 and March 2002, respectively.
An indictment filed in May 2004 against Anas Hatnawi, a member
of PIJ in Jenin, revealed similar plans to use cyanide in suicide
attacks against Israelis.
Then in late 2001, a virtual bombshell roused US intelligence
agents, when documents captured in the ruins of the bombed-out
Derunta camps in Afghanistan, run by the infamous Midhat Mursi
(aka Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar) which revealed massive evidence
of such doomsday material. Sixty-four videotapes including precise
instructions as to the use of Sarin gas displayed horrendous
photos showing experiments with dogs dying of gas.
Back in Europe, terrorists first planned to use chemical warfare
against political targets in the early 2000. In February, 2001,
the group had planned to launch a nerve gas attack upon the
European Parliament building in Strasbourg; the gas chosen by
Al-Qaeda for use on the European Parliament was Sarin.
On December 16, 2003 hundreds of French police raided the
Cité des 4000 housing estate in the suburbs of Paris.
Twenty-nine-year old French-Algerian Marwan Ben-Ahmed (aka Merouane
Benhamed) was arrested with a stash of chemicals to manufacture
explosives and two empty canisters. The man had intended to
fill the propane canisters with toxic chemicals for an attack
on political institutions. One of his associates was Rabah Kadri,
who had been arrested on November 5, 2002, suspected of plotting
a chemical attack upon the London Underground. On March 30,
2004, six people who belonged to the Islamist group Al Muhajiroun
were arrested in Britain with plans to employ the highly toxic
chemical Osmium Tetroxide for a chemical attack against either
Gatwick airport or the London underground. One month later,
In April 2004, 20 tons of chemical weaponry were discovered
in Jordan, including Sarin gas. The presence of these chemicals
in Jordan was part of a plot by Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists to
attack the headquarters of Jordanian Intelligence Services,
located on a hill in Western Amman. The mastermind of this plot
was claimed to be the notorious Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born
arch-terrorist, terrorizing Iraq for years until killed by an
air strike last summer.
The first recorded terrorist attack using chemical weapons
IEDs in Iraq happened in May 2004 when a roadside bomb in Iraq
was detonated, containing two precursors of Sarin. After they
handled shrapnel, two soldiers were mildly affected by the small
amount of Sarin that the bomb produced. The bomb had been made
using a 152mm artillery shell. Later, at least 12 similar artillery
shells containing Sarin and mustard gas, had been found by troops
in hidden weapons caches in Iraq. All this proved clearly that
the path from street chemistry IEDs to improvised chemical devices
was indeed very short.
Meanwhile
in Israel, this week, the IDF Home front Command's most extensive
exercises nationwide civil defense drill featured a response
to a simulated chemical mega-terror strike at a school in Ramat
Gan. The scenario envisioned a group of terrorists breaking
into the school and attacking with a chemical that caused severe
physical symptoms. Special Forces using sophisticated decontamination
equipment were rushed to the scene and carried out mass casualty
emergency evacuation to hospitals. The drill, performed under
realistic combat conditions presented a chilling scenario, of
what could be in store; if terrorists decided to revert to mass
casualty mega-terror attacks with non-conventional, such as
chemical weapons.
While
the use of chlorine gas in suicide terror attacks seemed
entirely novel, many groups, especially in the Israeli-Palestinian
arena, have attempted to combine suicide attacks with
crude chemical and biological components.
Meanwhile
in Israel, this week, the IDF Home front Command's most extensive
exercises nationwide civil defense drill featured a response
to a simulated chemical mega-terror strike at a school in Ramat
Gan. The scenario envisioned a group of terrorists breaking
into the school and attacking with a chemical that caused severe
physical symptoms. Special Forces using sophisticated decontamination
equipment were rushed to the scene and carried out mass casualty
emergency evacuation to hospitals. The drill, performed under
realistic combat conditions presented a chilling scenario, of
what could be in store; if terrorists decided to revert to mass
casualty mega-terror attacks with non-conventional, such as
chemical weapons.