- Al-Qaqa'a, the Iraqi military complex from which 350
tons of explosives disappeared, was looted after US troops left the area
refusing requests to protect the site, Iraqi witnesses say.
-
- They say unguarded buildings were stripped of their contents
after the arrival and departure of American troops in the last few days
of the war.
-
- Yesterday an armed Islamic group claimed to have obtained
a large quantity of the explosives and threatened to use them against coalition
troops. The group, calling itself al-Islam's Army Brigades, al-Karar Brigade,
said on a video that it had co-ordinated with officers and soldiers of
"the American intelligence" to obtain a "huge amount of
the explosives that were in the al-Qaqa'a facility".
-
- The looted explosives have become a contentious issue
in the US election campaign, adding weight to the accusations of John Kerry,
that George Bush mishandled the war.
-
- Iraqi people claim US forces were specifically asked
to secure the complex but declined to do so, saying their orders were to
proceed towards Baghdad. The looters are said to have removed everything
from desks and computers to ammunition and artillery shells.
-
- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has revealed
that among the items stolen were HMX and RDX, key components in plastic
explosives such as C-4 and Semtex, which are favoured by insurgent groups.
The IAEA said it had warned the Bush administration of the vulnerability
of the al-Qaqa'a arsenal in April last year after the looting of the main
Iraqi nuclear facility. There is strong suspicion that the explosives have
been used in the car bomb attacks in which hundreds of civilians as well
as US and Iraqi government forces have been killed.
-
- Al-Qaqa'a was identified in Tony Blair's Iraq weapons
dossier of September 2002 as a place where phosgene was used to produce
chemical or nerve agents. The United Nations, the IAEA and the Iraq Survey
Group all found the claims to be false. The factories did, however, legitimately
produce explosives for Iraq's armed forces. Before the war, IAEA inspectors
checked the seals in the bunker where the material was stored and found
them to be intact.
-
- The Bush administration has moved to discredit the reports
about the al-Qaqa'a looting, accusing Russian special forces of helping
to spirit the explosives out of Iraq. The Russian defence ministry was
adamant in denying the charge.
-
- Mohammed Hamid Abdullah, from Yusufiah, 30 miles south
of Baghdad, where al-Qaqa'a is located, said: "I know the Americans
were told what was in the factories, and they must protect it. But they
said they had to go on to Baghdad. We all saw people go in there afterwards
and take everything they could. It went on for days."
-
- Colonel Joseph Anderson, of the 2nd Brigade of the 101st
Airborne Division, said his troops had mustered at al-Qaqa'a on 10 April
2002, simply as a convenient location. No one had told him about the explosives
inside the complex.
-
- ©2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd. All rights reserved
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=577148
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