Kurdish officials say ISIS used 'poisonous substances' in village shelling
Thomson Reuters
More than 40 people suffered partial choking and skin irritation in northern Iraq as mortar shells and Katyusha rockets filled with "poisonous substances" exploded in their village on Tuesday evening, fired from positions held by Islamic State, local officials said on Wednesday.
None of the casualties died and five of them remain in hospital, said health officials in Taza, a mainly Shi'ite Turkmen village 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of the oil city of Kirkuk, in a region under Kurdish control.
"There were poisonous substances in these shells. We don't know what," Kirkuk province governor Najmuddin Kareem told reporters on visit to the village on Wednesday.
A total of 24 shells and rockets were fired into Taza from the nearby Bashir area, said Wasta Rasul, a commander of the Kurdish peshmerga forces in the region.
(Reporting by Mustafa Mahmoud and Isabel Coles; Writing by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Dominic Evans)
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