ISIS Bomb & Chemical Weapons ‘Research Center’ in Mosul Barely Targeted in US Strikes

• ISIS Bomb & Chemical Weapons ‘Research Center’ in Mosul Barely Targeted in US Strikes
  by https://www.rt.com/news/  
  ISIS has been using a high-tech lab in Mosul for building bombs and chemical weapons and training recruits in bomb-making since its capture in 2014. Barely targeted by US airstrikes, the facility has also provided jihadists with some 40 kg of uranium compounds.
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  “The University of Mosul is the best Daesh [Islamic State, formerly ISIS/ISIL] research center in the world,” Iraq’s top explosives officer Gen. Hatem Magsosi told The Wall Street Journal. “Trainees go to Raqqa [Syria], then to Mosul University to use the existing facilities.”
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  When the facility was seized by ISIS back in 2014, Iraqi officials reported to UN that some 40 kilos of uranium compounds kept there apparently fell into jihadists’ hands.
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  “Terrorist groups have seized control of nuclear material at the sites that came out of the control of the state,” Iraq’s UN ambassador wrote at the time, adding that such materials“can be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.”
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  However, the atomic watchdog IAEA said the materials were “low grade” and did not pose any significant security risk, somewhat downplaying the nuclear threat concerns. According to military officials, terrorists are using the well-equipped lab to produce “conventional” explosives and suicide vests, as well as chemical weapons, and peroxide-based bombs.
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  The lab is well-stocked and has dramatically boosted the terror group’s ability to wage attacks in Iraq, Magsosi told the newspaper. He added that once foreign trainees leave the lab, they return to their home countries with enough skills to make bombs like the ones used in the Paris and Brussels attacks.
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  Mosul fell into ISIS hands in the summer of 2014, and by March 2015 dozens of jihadists’ scientists and engineers had established their base at the university’s chemistry lab. People familiar with the university said that units were set up for the specific purpose of studying chemical explosives, weapons, and suicide bomb construction.
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