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		</div><p>The alleged use of chemical weapons in Mosul, if confirmed, would be a war crime and a serious violation of international humanitarian law, the United Nations has warned.</p>
<p>&#8220;This is horrible,&#8221; Lise Grande, the humanitarian co-ordinator in Iraq said in the statement. &#8220;There is never justification, none whatsoever, for the use of chemical weapons.&#8221; The alleged attack happened this week in eastern Mosul, an area declared fully liberated by Iraqi forces in January.</p>
<p>The attack hit a neighbourhood along the Tigris River, which roughly divides the city in two.<br />
Doctors in an urgent care hospital in the nearby city of Irbil say they began receiving patients showing symptoms of chemical weapons exposure on Thursday.</p>
<p>&#8220;The mortar hit our house, right inside the living room where we were sitting,&#8221; said Nazim Hamid, whose children had burns to their faces, arms and legs.</p>
<p>The family was being treated in the Irbil hospital.<br />
&#8220;There was a very bad smell, it was some kind of gas,&#8221; he said. &#8220;My kids were affected, some of them were burned and some of them had difficulty breathing.&#8221;</p>
<p>Hussein Qader, the deputy director of the hospital, said all 10 patients admitted for exposure are in stable condition and will be discharged in the coming days.</p>
<p>IS has used chemical weapons in Iraq and Syria at least 52 times according to a report published late last year by IHS conflict monitor, a London-based research and intelligence gathering group. The report said that at least 19 of the 52 attacks took place in and around Mosul.</p>
<p>Iraqi and US-led coalition officials have repeatedly expressed concern regarding IS chemical weapons attacks.</p>
<p>However IS-claimed insurgent attacks in Iraq and attacks targeting civilians attempting to flee Mosul cause far greater numbers of injuries and deaths to civilians.</p>
<p>Most of western Mosul is still under Islamic State group control despite a handful of recent gains on the city&#8217;s south-western edge by Iraqi forces over the past two weeks.</p>
<p>The US-led coalition campaign of airstrikes has been pivotal to securing those territorial gains, but has also resulted in civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure.</p>
<p>Coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria between November and January killed 19 civilians and wounded two, according to a statement from the Pentagon on Saturday.</p>
<p>The report brings the total number of civilian casualties acknowledged by the coalition to at least 220, according to the Pentagon.</p>
<p>Independent monitoring organisations put the number of civilian casualties much higher.<br />
Airwars, an independent monitoring group based in London, estimates the minimum number of civilian casualties caused by airstrikes to be at least 2,463.</p>
<p>The Pentagon report added that 19 reports of strikes resulting in civilian casualties were still being assessed, 11 of which occurred in and around Mosul.</p>
<p>Iraqi forces launched the operation to retake Mosul in October and began a push to retake the city&#8217;s western half last month.</p>
<p>After more than two years of slow territorial victories against IS by Iraqi ground forces backed by US-led coalition air power, western Mosul is the last significant urban area IS controls in Iraq.</p>
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