On the day the Islamic State overran the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014, it laid claim to one of the greatest weapons bonanzas ever to fall to a terrorist group: a large metropolis dotted with military bases and garrisons stocked with guns, bombs, rockets and even battle tanks.
But the most fearsome weapon in Mosul on that day was never used by the terrorists. Only now is it becoming clear what happened to it.
Locked away in a storage room on a Mosul college campus were two caches of cobalt-60, a metallic substance with lethally high levels of radiation. When contained within the heavy shielding of a radiotherapy machine, cobalt-60 is used to kill cancer cells. In terrorists’ hands, it is the core ingredient of a “dirty bomb,” a weapon that could be used to spread radiation and panic.
Western intelligence agencies were aware of the cobalt and watched anxiously for three years for signs that the militants might try to use it. Those concerns intensified in late 2014 when Islamic State officials boasted of obtaining radioactive material, and again early last year when the terrorists took over laboratories at the same Mosul college campus with the apparent aim of building new kinds of weapons.
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WNU Editor: Apparently ISIS did not appreciate what they had .... 'They aren't that smart': ISIS had the 'perfect' ingredient to build a huge dirty bomb under their noses in Mosul but had no idea (Daily Mail). What is also reassuring is that the real physical impact from such a bomb (if it was used) would have been minimal .... Isis And The C-60 For A Dirty Bomb In Mosul - Not A Huge Problem (Tim Worstall, Forbes).
1 comment:
The one's who aren't smart are the ones that developed the capability in the first place.
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