SYDNEY: The Daesh terror group has shown it is prepared to use chemical weapons and is likely to have among its recruits the technical expertise to develop them, Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said.

In a speech, Bishop said Australia had no doubt that the Syrian regime had used toxic chemicals including sarin and chlorine over the past four years.

But she said apart from some crude and small scale endeavors, the conventional wisdom had been that the Daesh group’s intention to acquire and weaponize chemical agents was largely aspirational.

“The use of chlorine by Daesh, and its recruitment of highly technically trained professionals, including from the West, have revealed far more serious efforts in chemical weapons development,” she said in Perth. “Daesh is likely to have amongst its tens of thousands of recruits the technical expertise necessary to further refine precursor materials and build chemical weapons.” The use of chlorine in homemade bombs has been reported in several parts of Iraq and Syria, with car and roadside bombs easy to rig with chlorine canisters.