The UN Security Council has unanimously decided to extend for another year the mandate of a panel tasked with investigating chemical attacks in Syria and identifying those responsible.<br/><br/> The council adopted a resolution to prolong the joint investigation by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) until November 2017.<br/><br/>The panel, known as the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM),has established during its year-long investigation that Syrian government forces carried out three chlorine gas attacks on villages in 2014 and 2015. <br/><br/>The JIM also found that the Islamic State group in Syria used mustard gas as a weapon in August 2015.