ISIS has been using a high-tech lab in Mosul for building bombs and chemical weapons and training recruits in bomb-making since its capture in 2014. Barely targeted by US airstrikes, the facility has also provided jihadists with some 40 kg of uranium compounds.
“The University of Mosul is the best Daesh [Islamic State, formerly ISIS/ISIL] research center in the world,” Iraq’s top explosives officer Gen. Hatem Magsosi told The Wall Street Journal. “Trainees go to Raqqa [Syria], then to Mosul University to use the existing facilities.”
When the facility was seized by ISIS back in 2014, Iraqi officials reported to UN that some 40 kilos of uranium compounds kept there apparently fell into jihadists’ hands.
“Terrorist groups have seized control of nuclear material at the sites that came out of the control of the state,” Iraq’s UN ambassador wrote at the time, adding that such materials “can be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.”
