London – Most weapons looted from Iraqi military stocks, according to Amnesty International report.

The majority of weapons used by Daesh come from supplies plundered from the Iraqi military and mainly consist of stock designed or manufactured in former Soviet bloc states, according to Amnesty International.

Advances made across northern Iraq last year, particularly the capture of Mosul, gave Daesh access to a huge stockpile of arms that also included modern U.S.-made weaponry.

“We have been able to see what type of weapons they have got but in terms of quantity it’s very difficult to know that,” Patrick Wilcken, an arms control researcher at Amnesty, told Anadolu Agency.

“However, what we can say is that the top one is definitely Russian and former Soviet Union weapons. So it’s Russian and Eastern European and it’s their standard equipment that they are using.”

Wilcken said the U.S-made and NATO equipment in Daesh’s hands was a result of arms transfers made to Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

He added that the bulk of Daesh’s arsenal was old and dated from the 1980s and 1990s.

“The 1980s was a crucial era for arms buildup and that was the time of the Iran-Iraq War, when Russia was the principal supplier of Iraq,” Wilcken said. “But I think it’s important to remember that just because the weapons are old does not mean that they were necessarily transferred in the era they were manufactured.

“And a lot of old Warsaw Pact stock has been transferred by the U.S., the U.K., other coalition members, during the occupation of Iraq and post-2003. And even more recently, supplies to Kurdish forces in post-, mid-2014 were mainly old Warsaw Pact stock.”

Daesh also buys weapons from corrupt members of the Syrian military and on the “illicit market that runs across the borders,” Wilcken added.

“There does seem to be a lot of reports of illicit traffic. And it would be surprising if there wasn’t illicit traffic given that the whole region is in conflict.”/AA/