US: IS chemical-weapons effort ‘disrupted, degraded’

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The U.S. has “disrupted and degraded” the Islamic State’s ability to produce chemical weapons by launching multiple airstrikes in Iraq based on information provided by a militant leader who was captured last month and turned over to the Iraqi government Thursday, Pentagon officials said.

“We feel good about the damage we’ve done to the program,” Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said. He declined to say which elements of the militants’ chemical-weapons program were struck or how severely they were damaged. “I’m not going to say we knocked it out in full, but we feel confident that we made a difference.”

Cook said Sulayman Dawud al-Bakkar, whom he described as the Islamic State’s “emir of chemical and traditional weapons,” gave up important information about the chemical-weapons program during interrogations after being captured in February. Cook declined to say more about the capture, but other defense officials have said al-Bakkar, also known as Sleiman Daoud al-Afari, was captured by U.S. special forces in northern Iraq.