Global Security Newswire

Two soldiers were treated for “minor exposure” to sarin after a bomb containing the nerve agent exploded near a U.S. military convoy in Iraq, military authorities said today (see GSN, April 9). The incident, which occurred a “couple of days ago,” involved a binary-type 155-millimeter artillery shell in which two separate chemicals are mixed together after the shell is fired to produce sarin, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. chief military spokesman in Iraq. 

“The round had been rigged as an IED (improvised explosive device) which was discovered by a U.S. force convoy,” Kimmitt said. “A detonation occurred before the IED could be rendered inoperable. This produced a very small dispersal of agent,” he said.

Two members of an explosive ordnance team were treated after the agent release.

The regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein declared all chemical weapons munitions declared before the 1991 Gulf War, Kimmitt said.

Kimmitt also said that he believed that the insurgents who rigged the bomb did not know that it had contained nerve agent (Chris Torchia, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, May 17).