ISIS deployed drones with chemical gas to defend positions in Mosul

The Islamic State’s (ISIS) extremists have deployed drones strapped with explosives, long-range artillery shells “filled with chlorine and mustard gas and highly effective snipers”, a top Iraqi Kurdish security official said on Sunday.
The Chief of Security in the Kurdistan Regional Government [KRG], Masrour Barzani, told Reuters that ISIS has deployed several of these drones since the Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Iraqi Army troops launched a battle to retake Mosul on 17 October.

According to Barzani, the next phase of the Mosul operation may be harder as ISIS is expected to show fiercer resistance to protect its main positions inside the city.

“The fight against ISIS is going to be a long fight,” the KRG official said. “Not only militarily but also economically, ideologically.”

He said their forces have made a remarkable progress within the past three weeks, clearing out ISIS fighters from eastern Mosul after Kurdish peshmerga units broke through the group’s defence lines.

“As they [ISIS] are getting more desperate, expectations are that they might fight more fiercely as you close in,” Barzani said.

The Kurdish official also pointed out that there are many different IEDs (improvised explosive devices) ISIS puts in various locations to impede the advance of the Iraqi and Kurdish forces.

“So in one house they are putting one IED and trying to hide it. And once it explodes then the entire neighborhood explodes,” he said.

Source: /ARA News