Medical Aspects of Chemical Warfare (2008) - The Black Vault

Medical Aspects of Chemical WarfareEgypt denied ever using chemical warfare duringits support of the new republican forces, but early accountsand evidence of chemical warfare came fromjournalists in the area. On June 8, 1963, Soviet-madeEgyptian air force airplanes dropped chloroacetophenonetear gas bombs on numerous royalist villagessouth of Sadah, near Saudi Arabia. Egypt allegedlyused the bombs to terrorize or kill not only the villageinhabitants but also the royalists hiding in cavesand tunnels. An alleged attack took place in July 1963against the village of Al Kawma and killed seven civilians.The United Nations (UN) investigated the allegationby sending an observation team to Yemen, but itsreport found no evidence of a chemical attack. 154Newspaper articles described additional chemicalattacks taking place from 1963 to 1967, although mostdisagreed on the dates, locations, and effects of theattacks. In January 1965 Egypt used a combination ofchloroacetophenone and mustard gas for the first timeon villagers in the Mount Urush region. A concoctionof phosgene and mustard was dropped on citizensin the Sherazeih region, northeast of Sana, betweenMarch and July. The United States, involved in its owncontroversy concerning the use of riot control agentsin Vietnam, took little notice of the reports.In January 1967 an attack occurred on the Yemenivillage of Kitaf. During this air raid, bombs weredropped upwind of the town and produced a graygreencloud that drifted over the village. According tonewspaper accounts, 165–159 95% of the population up to2 km downwind of the impact site died within 10 to 50minutes of the attack. All the animals in the area alsodied. The estimated total human casualties numberedmore than 200. Another reported attack took place onthe town of Gahar in May 1967, killing 75 inhabitants.Additional attacks occurred that same month on thevillages of Gabas, Hofal, Gadr, and Gadafa, killingover 243 occupants. In addition, two villages in SaudiArabia near the Yemen border were bombed withchemical weapons.Shortly after these attacks, the International RedCross examined victims, soil samples, and bomb fragmentsand officially declared that chemical weapons,identified as mustard agent and possibly nerve agents,had been used in Yemen. Much like the progressionof chemicals used during World War I, the Egyptiansallegedly started with tear gases, which were meant toterrorize more than kill, before progressing to mustardagents, which caused more serious casualties, andfinally to nerve agents, which were meant to kill largenumbers quickly. This was the first use of nerve agentsin combat. The combination of the use of nerve agentsby the Egyptians in early 1967 and the outbreak of warbetween Egypt and Israel during the Six-Day War inJune finally attracted world attention to the events inYemen. The Saudi government protested the Egyptianuse of chemical weapons to the UN. U Thant, secretarygeneral of the UN, sought to confirm the use ofchemical weapons with the Egyptians, but they deniedit. The UN apparently took little further notice of thesituation. At the height of the conflict, Egypt had 75,000troops in Yemen, but the Six-Day War with Israel andsubsequent defeat in June 1967 forced it to withdrawtroops from Yemen and negotiate a peace deal. TheYemen civil war officially ended with the Compromiseof 1970, a political agreement between the republicanand royalist factions. A republican government wasformed in Yemen, incorporating members from theroyalist faction but not the royal family. 154–161Much of what the US Army learned from the Yemencivil war was negative. Reports of possible chemicaluse in certain areas of the world, particularly thoseareas inaccessible to official and technical observers,were difficult to confirm or even condemn without accurateand verifiable information. News reports aloneproved informative but unreliable. Even samples fromthe alleged attacks apparently did not lead to furtherpolitical or military action. Most importantly, with theworld distracted by the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War andevents in Vietnam, politics discouraged a universalcondemnation and follow-up response. In effect, theworld powers let the event pass much as they hadwhen Italy used chemical warfare against Ethiopiain the 1930s.Six-Day WarThe 1967 Arab-Israeli Six-Day War came very closeto being the first major war in which both combatantsopenly used nerve agents and biological warfare. OnJune 5, 1967, fearing a pending attack from its Arabneighbors, Israel launched a preemptive strike againstJordan, Egypt, and Syria. They invaded the Sinai Peninsula,Jerusalem’s Old City, Jordan’s West Bank, theGaza Strip, and the Golan Heights.Reports soon appeared alleging that the Egyptianshad stored artillery rounds filled with nerve agentsin the Sinai Peninsula for use during the war. Israelis,reflecting on Egypt’s possible testing of the weaponsin Yemen earlier in the year, suddenly realized thattheir troops and cities were vulnerable to attack. Thefact that chemical weapons were not used during thewar was possibly due to Israel’s preemptive action orto the newspaper reports of the Yemen civil war. Israelplaced orders for gas masks with Western countries.However, a UN-sponsored ceasefire ended the fightingon June 10, 1967, and the potential chemical war didnot occur. 73,155,156,16158