Iraq's envoy to the United Nations says the government in Baghdad has lost control of a former chemical weapons facility to "armed terrorist groups" and is unable to fulfill its international obligations to destroy toxins kept there.
Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim announced the development in a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that was made public on July 8.
It says militants on June 11 seized the Muthanna facility north of Baghdad, where remnants of a former chemical weapons program were kept in two bunkers.
Alhakim said surveillance cameras showed the looting of some of the equipment and appliances on June 12 “before the terrorists disabled the surveillance system."
Militants in the Islamic State, formerly called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), have seized large swaths of Syria and Iraq in the past month.
