Nearly two dozen members of the U.S. military have been exposed to old chemical weapons in Iraq - and secret stashes of the deadly munitions remained scattered across ISIS-held territory.
At least 17 American military personnel and seven Iraqi police have been sickened by poisons, including sarin and mustard gases since 2003, according to a lengthy investigation by The New York Times.
The discovery of some 5,000 chemical weapons that date from 1991 and earlier was kept secret for several reasons, The Times said.
The most pressing one was to prevent jihadist groups like Islamic State from seizing the weapons and repurposing them to use in makeshift bombs. Even aged, the chemicals retain potency.
Many of the largest remaining caches are in the northern region held by ISIS.
The chemical stockpile, dating from the Iran-Iraq war, has no relation to the weapons of mass destruction that President George W. Bush insisted Saddam Hussein was concealing. No such weapons have ever been found.
But plenty of buried munitions from the 1980s - many made in the U.S. or Europe - are still hidden, The Times said.
Several affected soldiers were denied proper medical care because of security concerns, The Times said.
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