ISIS Extremist Recruits Foreigners to Make Chemical Weapon for the Terrorist Group

According to mailonline, Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has revealed that Islamic State militants has employed the use of chlorine as a weapon and are recruiting 'highly trained professionals' to make even more chemical weapons. Ms Bishop said the rise of militant groups such as ISIS, also known as Daish, posed 'one of the gravest security threats we face today.'

'Apart from some crude and small scale endeavours, the conventional wisdom has been that the terrorist intention to acquire and weaponise chemical agents has been largely aspirational,' Bishop said.

'The use of chlorine by Daish, and its recruitment of highly technically trained professionals, including from the West, have revealed far more serious efforts in chemical weapons development.

'Daish is likely to have amongst its tens of thousands of recruits the technical expertise necessary to further refine precursor materials and build chemical weapons.'

The Iraqi Kurdish authorities have already made allegations that they have evidence that ISIS used chlorine gas against their peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq in January.

Chlorine is a choking agent whose use as a chemical weapon dates back to World War One. It is banned under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, which prohibits all use of toxic agents on the battlefield.