An artillery round containing sarin nerve gas exploded after it was discovered by occupation forces in Iraq, causing a "very small dispersal of agent," a US military spokesman said.
Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said the 155 millimeter shell had been rigged as a roadside bomb and was discovered by a passing American convoy. It was confirmed to contain sarin gas by members of the Iraqi Survey Group, the US team searching for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, he said, according to AFP.
"Two explosive ordnance team members were treated for minor exposure to nerve agent as a result of the partial detonation of the round," Kimmitt told a news conference.
"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," he said.
"This caused a very small dispersal of agent," he said, adding that the former regime had declared all such rounds destroyed after the 1991 Gulf War.
According to him, the shell was designed to combine chemical agents to produce sarin after being fired from a gun but the amount of nerve gas generated by the improvised device was "very limited".
It was "virtually ineffective" as a chemical weapon and the attackers probably did not even know what the shell contained Sarin, Kimmitt said. (Albawaba.com)
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