ISIS prepping for use of chemical weapons

They also fear that the Islamic State's use of chemical weapons will widen and have thus provided some Iraqi troops with gas masks to protect against exposure.

In the wake of the Paris attacks claimed by IS, France's prime minister on Thursday warned of the potential for an attack by chemical or biological weapons.

As by Newsmax, the Islamic State group has set up a specialized weapons team that is exclusively dedicated to the research and development of such weapons with the assistance of scientists from Iraq and Syria.

Iraqi officials have raised concerns that a large area controlled by extremists, since the group overran parts of Iraq and Syria a year ago, has left authorities largely in the dark about Isis activities.

ISIS has already managed to use mustard gas at least once against Syrian rebel forces in Aleppo.

GETTYA Japanese soldier cleans up in the aftermath of the 1995 sarin attack on Tokyo's subway system

According to an unidentified Iraqi general, the country's military distributed gas masks to troops deployed to the west and north of Baghdad Province over the summer.

Meanwhile, Hakim al-Zamili, the head of the Iraqi parliament's security and defense committee, noted that the country's military received from Russian Federation 1,000 protective suits against chemical attacks. Also, wordsmiths may appreciate, as Pollock notes, that "ISIS" sounds more "like a real word".

In a very real sense, then, using terms like "Islamic State" or the acronyms ISIS or IS unwittingly helps the group to sell its message; it is not a state in any rational sense of the term, but by relying on the familiar terms to describe the group, we are helping to turn it into one.

As Parisians continue to grieve the lives of their people taken away by the Islamic State in a series of attacks last week, the terrorists are once again spreading terror as officials recently confirmed that chemical weapons may be used by the jihadists in other attacks.

Retired Lt. Gen Richard Zahner, a former top military intelligence officer in Iraq, said that while al Qaeda was never able to launch a chemical weapons program, ISIS has greater financial resources.

In it, the deputy, Sameer al-Khalifawy, wrote that chemical weapons would ensure "swift victory" and "terrorise our enemies". But, he added, what was needed was "to secure a safe environment to carry out experiments".

ISIS controls more than 60 percent of Syria's oil production capacity and about 10 percent of Iraq's oil production capacity, Reuters estimates. In January, U.S. Central Command announced that an airstrike had killed Abu Mailk, a chemical expert who had worked under Saddah Hussein.

Iraqi officials complained of lack of co-operation from neighbouring Syria. Terror experts say that unlike other groups which receive money from foreign fighters, ISIS largely funds itself.

The IS group has declared a self-styled caliphate in bands of territory it seized in Iraq and Syria, but has faced recent setbacks from Kurdish and Arab forces in Iraq's Sinjar and parts of northeastern Syria. The Syrian government allowed Iraqi officals to interrogate him in prison, but refused to hand him over.

He says the radical revision on oil revenue came after Treasury officials gained new intelligence on Islamic State's petroleum operations-similar to the ledgers Rand used for its study-following a rare ground assault by American Special Operations Forces this May.