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| Iraq |
| Chlorine Attack in Ramadi |
| 2007-01-30 |
| AR RAMADI, Iraq – Emergency Response Unit personnel, Iraqi Police, and civilians northwest of Ramadi were attacked by a suicide vehicle-born improvised explosive device (SVBIED) early Sunday [Jan 28, 2007]. Coalition forces responded to the attack to provide immediate medical assistance and evacuate the wounded to medical facilities. Along with the suicide bomber, 16 people were killed by the attack. The SVBIED was a dump truck filled with explosives and included a chlorine tank. The truck crashed into the Emergency Response Unit compound and detonated. There are no indications of any casualties caused by the release of chlorine gas. The Al Jazeera Police and U.S. Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 37th Infantry Brigade responded to the scene and worked together to evacuate the casualties. The majority of the casualties were evacuated to the U.S. medical facility at Camp Ramadi. Some victims of the attack were evacuated to Coalition medical facilities in Balad and Baghdad. Emergency Response Units serve as a quick reaction force to augment and support the police in Anbar province. They are made up of Iraqi citizens and are led by the commander of the Iraqi Police in Anbar. |
| Posted by:Chuck Simmins |
| #5 Al Jazeera is a city as well as a POS news service. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2007-01-30 23:24 |
| #4 "The Al Jazeera Police and U.S. Soldiers..." Whaa? |
| Posted by: Phineter Thraviger 2007-01-30 21:31 |
| #3 Actually, considering the nature of chlorine, a SVBIED is probably the worst way to deliver such an attack. A truck-mounted bug-spraying unit would be much effective : gets the gas up in the air a few feet where it can settle down and spread. When the Germans used chlorine against the British in the Second Battle of Ypres, they used the heavier than air aspect of chlorine to their advantage : the gas was pumped from tanks over No-Mans Land, and filled the British trenches, causing most of the fatalities from gas. However, due to its volatility, chlorine is best used on cloudy, windless days and against dug-in positions. I can think of few climates that would be worse for the use of chlorine than Iraq on a sunny or breezy day. |
| Posted by: Shieldwolf 2007-01-30 21:12 |
| #2 Chlorine itself is not very stable; the reason it makes a good bleach is that it will react with damn near anything. I suspect the heat and pressure from the explosion was more of a boost to the reactive nature, and most of the chlorine was chemically bound pretty quick. Naturally, some of those compounds could be dangerous, but I suspect this is another example of the jihadis operating more on faith (or Hollywood physics) than brains. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2007-01-30 20:54 |
| #1 How hard are such SVBIEDs to cobble together? How hard is it to assemble that amount of chlorine? How stable is the chlorine gas in a (pressurized?) tank? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-01-30 20:40 |