An Iraqi government scientist said Wednesday that 350 tonnes of high explosives stored at the Al-Qaqaa military depot, 30 kilometers south of Baghdad, could not have been removed before Saddam Hussein's government collapsed in April 2003.
Mohammed al-Sharaa, who directs the science ministry's site monitoring unit and previously collaborated with UN weapons inspectors, said facility staff had been under strict orders to prevent materials from leaving. He added that Al-Qaqaa's management had sought US military protection for the site before the capital fell.
The UN atomic agency concluded this week that the stockpile, which includes the explosives HMX and RDX, both usable as triggers in nuclear devices, vanished sometime after the April 2003 invasion. Some US officials suggested the materials had been moved earlier; the Pentagon said it could not determine when they disappeared.
Al-Sharaa also warned that several nearby Babil province facilities, including the Al-Milad plant in Iskandariyah and the Yarmuk and Hateen sites, may have suffered similar looting. Iraq's Science Ministry formally notified the IAEA in a 10 October letter after repeated agency inquiries. Al-Sharaa noted the ministry had been left with oversight of only two sites after the interim government assumed authority in June.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in October 2004, in its own words.