Shiite Fighters Bog Down ISIL Chemical Attack in Iraq

Fighters of Shiite volunteer units have thwarted attempts by Islamic State terrorists to stage a chemical attack in northern Iraq.

“The security forces cleared the road leading to a village in Salah Ed-Din province and thirty mortar shells filled with gaseous chlorine were defused by Iraqi security forces,” the al-Hashd ash-Shaabi brigade said in a statement.

Many ISIL militants, most of them foreigners, were killed during Monday’s firefights just as mine disposal experts defused many homemade explosive devices planted inside local houses,” the statement added.

Over the past three years the jihadists have established control over large swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territory and are trying spread out to Libya and elsewhere in Northern Africa.

According to an Al Jazeera report out in March, the al-Hashd ash-Shaabi brigade numbers an estimated 100,000 armed volunteers.