Islamic State has been using a well-stocked university chemistry lab in Mosul, Iraq, for the past year to concoct a new generation of explosive devices and train militants to make them, according to US and Iraqi military officials and two people familiar with the university, The Wall Street Journal reported.
General Hatem Magsosi, Iraq’s top explosives officer, said the facilities at the University of Mosul have enhanced Islamic State’s ability to launch attacks in Iraq and to export bomb-making know-how when its fighters leave the so-called caliphate and return to their home countries.
The weaponry churned out includes peroxide-based chemical bombs and suicide-bomb vests like the ones used in the Brussels attacks and by at least some of the Paris attackers, according to the general and others in the Iraqi military, as well as an official from the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State.
Other bombs made include nitrate-based explosives and chemical weapons, Gen. Magsosi said.
“The University of Mosul is the best Daesh research center in the world,” the general said, using another name for Islamic State. “Trainees go to Raqqa, [Syria], then to Mosul university to use the existing facilities.”
Its current status isn’t clear, however. The U.S.-led coalition has targeted the campus with airstrikes more than once, most recently on March 19.
“We do know that Daesh has used some of those buildings for military purposes and we bombed them,” said Col. Steve Warren,spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq.
The Pentagon said March 19 it was targeting an Islamic State weapons-storage facility and headquarters, but gave no more detail.
Colonel Warren said the Mosul bomb-making labs are among the biggest that Islamic State has established. He said the university has a sprawling campus and the coalition would continue to target such facilities if they are identified.
Last week, the Pentagon said the U.S. military had killed a man they identified as one of Islamic State’s top military officials. It didn’t give any further information, but Gen. Magsosi said the man, known as Abu Eman, was the top expert at the Mosul bomb lab.
When Islamic State captured Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in the summer of 2014, the university was one of the spoils. The university had a strong reputation around Iraq for its science departments, alumni say.
By March 2015, dozens of Islamic State engineers and scientists had set up a research hub in the chemistry lab, which was full of equipment and chemicals, according to the people with knowledge of the university.
Many of the regular staff, including professors specialized in organic, industrial and analytical chemistry, remained in the city at the time, but the new laboratories were staffed by Islamic State’s own men, according to one of those people.
At least since August, dozens of individuals—presumed to be foreigners because they didn’t speak Iraqi Arabic—were seen moving through the labs, the two people said. They said they were told specialized units had been set up there for chemical explosives and weapons research as well as suicide-bomb construction.
A separate group at the university’s technical college was dedicated to building suicide-bomb components, one of the two said.
During the same time frame, there has been a surge in Islamic State’s use of bombs that mix chemical precursors into an explosive powdery substance known as triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, both in Iraq and Europe.
It isn’t clear how many of these weapons, if any, can be traced to research or training conducted in Mosul.
General Magsosi says that his bomb-detection units called peroxide-based explosives the “Satan Recipe” because they are very hard to detect and they are usually so lethal.
It isn’t yet known whether the militants who carried out the Paris and Brussels attacks spent time at the Mosul facility during their time in Islamic State territory. Investigators say they suspect that at least one member of the network, Najim Laachraoui, made TATP-based explosives that were stuffed into suicide belts and suitcases and used in those attacks.
