Sarin: 1st WMD found in Iraq
2004-05-17 17:48
Baghdad, Iraq - A roadside bomb containing sarin nerve agent exploded near a US military convoy in Baghdad, the US military said on Monday. It was the first confirmed finding of any of the banned weapons upon which the United States based its case for the Iraq war.
"The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155mm artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found," said Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesperson in Iraq. "The round had been rigged as an IED (improvised explosive device) which was discovered by a US force convoy.
"A detonation occurred before the IED could be rendered inoperable. This produced a very small dispersal of agent," he said. The incident occurred "a couple of days ago", he said. Two US soldiers were treated for minor injuries, Kimmitt added.
The Iraqi Survey Group is a US organisation whose task was to search for weapons of mass destruction after the ouster of Saddam Hussein in last year's invasion. Saddam claimed to have destroyed his chemical and biological weapons and UN inspectors had uncovered no major finds.
"The round was an old binary type requiring the mixing of two chemical components in separate sections of the cell before the deadly agent is produced," Kimmitt said. "The cell is designed to work after being fired from an artillery piece."
He said he believed that insurgents who rigged the artillery shell as a bomb didn't know it contained the nerve agent, and that the dispersal of the nerve agent from such a rigged device was very limited. Many of the materials used for roadside bombs are believed to have been looted from arsenals after the collapse of the regime in April 2003.
First shell with sarin found
Dispersal would be far more effective if a shell containing nerve agent were fired from an artillery piece, he said. Kimmitt said he believed it was the first case in which US forces had found an artillery shell containing sarin.
"The former regime had declared all such rounds destroyed before the 1991 Gulf War," Kimmitt said. "Two explosive ordinance team members were treated for minor exposure to nerve agent as a result of the partial detonation of the round."
Developed in the mid-1930s by Nazi scientists, a single drop of sarin can cause quick, agonising choking death. There are no known instances of the Nazis actually using the gas, but that didn't stop other nations from stocking it.
Nerve gases work by inhibiting key enzymes in the nervous system, blocking their transmission. Small exposures can be treated with antidotes, if administered quickly.
Antidotes to nerve gases similar to sarin are so effective that top poison gas researchers predict they eventually will cease to be a war threat.
- AP