AP News, March 28th, 2007
Iraqi security forces shot two suicide truck bombers carrying highly toxic chorine before they could reach a government complex in Fallujah on Wednesday, but the explosives detonated, wounding 15 U.S. and Iraqi forces, the American military said.
The chlorine gas attack was the eighth since Jan. 28, when a suicide bomber driving a dump truck filled with explosives and a chlorine tank struck a quick-reaction force and Iraqi police in Ramadi, killing 16 people.
The attack on the government compound began with mortar fire, the military said.
Iraqi police fired on the first suicide bomber, and Iraq soldiers shot at the second. Both trucks exploded before they could get inside the compound that houses the mayor's office, U.S. military offices, the city jail and police station.
The statement did not give a breakdown of how many Iraqi and U.S. forces were wounded. Iraqi soldiers and police were being treated for breathing troubles, nausea, skin irritation and vomiting _ symptoms of chlorine gas inhalation.
Chlorine gas is considered an ineffective weapon because it has a strong odor, a visible green color and disperses quickly, posing risk of death only to people close to the attack. Experts say it is probably meant to cause panic more than mass casualties.
"I hate to call it chemical warfare in the sense that there are real chemical weapons, and those are profoundly toxic," said William Arkin, a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University.
"My sense is that these are attacks directed against Iraqi citizens because American military can protect themselves better, they are in better health and they can put on gas masks," he added.
Chlorine gas was first used as chemical warfare by the Germans in World War I, unleashed in Ypres, Belgium, in 1915. The use of chemical weapons provoked international revulsion, and it was banned under the Geneva Protocol of 1925.
At low levels, exposure to chlorine gas causes difficulty in breathing and irritation of the skin and eyes. At extremely high levels, it dissolves in the lungs to form hydrochloric acid, burning lung tissue and essentially drowning a person.
Arkin said Iraqis may have stolen chlorine from a large manufacturing plant in Ramadi, which is near Fallujah, in the months following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, a period marked by widespread looting.
"Really, the only concern is how much of this stuff got out during the ... period in which a lot of looting was going on," Arkin said.
