ME and Ophelia

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IRAQI ARTILLARY ROUND CONTAINING SARIN
Exploded near a US military convoy a few days ago

The Scotsman and San Francisco Chronicle reports that a roadside bomb containing sarin nerve agent exploded near a U.S. military convoy, the U.S. military said today.

"The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155-millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the 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. "A detonation occurred before the IED could be rendered inoperable. This produced a very small dispersal of agent. The incident occurred "a couple of days ago", he said.

The round was an old `binary-type' shell in which two chemicals held in separate sections are mixed after firing to produce sarin, Kimmitt said. He said he believed that insurgents who rigged the artillery shell as a bomb didn't know it contained the nerve agent, and that the dispersal of the nerve agent from such a rigged device was very limited.

"The former regime had declared all such rounds destroyed before the 1991 Gulf War," Kimmitt said. "Two explosive ordinance team members were treated for minor exposure to nerve agent as a result of the partial detonation of the round."

The Iraqi Survey Group is a U.S. organization whose task was to search for weapons of mass destruction after the ouster of Saddam Hussein in last year's invasion.

Update:
BBC News Middle East 'Nerve gas bomb' explodes in Iraq
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In 1984 Iraq started producing Sarin
In 1988 Saddam Hussein used it to gas thousands of Kurds in Iraq
In 1995 Iraq admitted to possessing 790 tons of Sarin

"The former regime had declared all such rounds destroyed before the 1991 Gulf War" - Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief military spokesman in Iraq.
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Update 19 May: Tantor links to the Fox News report and writes: "Military Finds Nearly A Gallon Of Sarin In Iraqi Shell. The shell, rigged as a bomb to ambush our troops, contained nearly a gallon of sarin. One drop on your skin will kill you dead. Saddam dropped sarin on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988, killing 5,000 and injuring 65,000."

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Note, Sarin Nerve Gas. Nerve gases work by inhibiting key enzymes in the nervous system, blocking their transmission. Small exposures can be treated with antidotes, if administered quickly. Antidotes to nerve gases similar to sarin are so effective that top poison gas researchers predict they eventually will cease to be a war threat.