Islamic State developing new weapons despite losses

REUTERS, 26th APRIL, 2017
Islamic State militants have developed an improvised explosive device (IED) that can be launched from rifles or dropped from an aerial drone, an arms monitoring group said on Wednesday.

Conflict Armament Research (CAR) said the Sunni militant group was “promoting the development of ‘own-brand’ weapons” to provide its insurgents with otherwise unavailable armaments.

“The (IED) can be thrown, launched from an improvised rifle attachment, or in its most recent phases of development, dropped from a commercial, off-the-shelf unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or drone,” CAR said in a report following visits to Mosul in November, February and March.

Iraqi military and elite counter-terrorism forces launched a sweeping, U.S.-backed offensive in October to retake the city, Islamic State’s last major urban stronghold in Iraq seized in a lightning offensive in 2014.

They have retaken most of Mosul, including its half east of the Tigris River, and surrounded the militants in its northwest quarter including the Old City, home to the Grand al-Nuri mosque where IS declared a “caliphate” over parts of Iraq and Syria.