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Volcanoes In Damascus: Was Hezbollah Involved With Developing Chemical Munitions?

Regular readers of the Brown Moses Blog will be familiar with two weapons used by pro-government forces known as IRAMs (Improvised Rocket Assisted Munitions) and UMLACAs (Unidentified Munitions Linked to Alleged Chemical Attacks).

Written by Brown Moses Published on Read time Approx. 2 minutes

At its most basic, and IRAM is an artillery rocket that’s had the standard warhead removed, and replaced by a much larger warhead, and in Syria these have been launched from single barrel stand launchers, and four barrel truck mounted launchers.

UMLACAs are munitions that were linked to the August 21st Sarin attack, and come in both an explosive type, and chemical type.  The munitions come in two sizes, with the larger type, fired from a single barrel launcher

One question that remains is what the Syrian forces call these weapons. A narrator on a YouTube video calls them “bourkan” rockets, which translates to Volcano, and if you search for “Volcano” in Arabic there’s some results that show the same munition appearing to be used.

The description claims to show Hezbollah using a Volcano rocket, and is a copy of an earlier video claiming to show Hezbollah in Eastern Ghouta, Damascus.  Hezbollah appear to have usedtheir own design of IRAM in the fighting in Qusayr, Homs, and it would be interesting if both the Syrian National Defence Force and Hezbollah are using the same term for IRAMs, even though the design differs

Then, a couple of days ago, the picture at right was posted on a pro-Hezbollah Facebook group.

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The original Facebook post has been deleted, but the contents was reported here.  This is a screengrab taken from the video showing the Syrian National Defence Force launching UMLACAs, but what’s interesting is commentators on Facebook claimed that this was a Hezbollah designed weapon, known as the “Volcano” described as “The Pride of Lebanese Industry”.  It could be said that the explosive version of the UMLACA is basically a larger version of the IRAM, and a suspected chemical variant of the IRAM shared at least one interesting feature with the chemical version of the UMLACA.  It should be kept in mind these are just claims by commentators on a pro-Hezbollah Facebook page, so claims the weapon is Hezbollah made should be taken with a pinch of salt, and the NDF video showing the UMLACA claims it’s a Syrian made weapon.

This leaves many unanswered questions; it’s not clear if both the IRAMs and UMLACAs are known as Volcanoes, or if it’s an error by the commentators on the pro-Hezbollah Facebook page.  If they are known as Volcanoes, does that suggest the UMLACA could be a more advanced version of the IRAM?  Was Hezbollah involved with the use of IRAMs by the Syrian military, and did that in turn lead to involvement with the development of the chemical UMLACA? Does that mean Hezbollah has access to UMLACAs, potentially their first chemical weapon?  At this stage it’s too earlier to know, but it does add a new twist to the tale of IRAMs and UMLACAs in Syria.

The original version of this post first appeared on the Brown Moses Blog. 

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