They lie in the ruins of Sirte, the last refuge of Muammar Gaddafi, or are piled unguarded in the nearby desert; devastated in the battle to end the despot’s reign, the city now faces deadly danger from thousands of tonnes of unused munitions. The most immediate threat comes from hidden caches of small arms, thousands of shells and ready-to-use rockets abandoned when the former Libyan leader fled the city after weeks of fierce resistance, only to be killed on October 20. On September 1 Street, one of the city’s main arteries, intact 100mm shells lie in the middle of the roadway, while several residents hang around in the nearby ruins. A Red Cross explosives expert said the main danger comes from unexploded ordinance: “I expected worse, but many of the munitions have (already) been used. There is, nonetheless, an enormous amount of work to do.”
But in the long-term, the military bases scattered around Gaddafi’s last bastion threaten the stability of the whole Sahel region: unbelievable quantities of weapons, including the latest, lethal generation of missile, lying unguarded – enough to start several inter-African wars. “Months ago we warned the NTC and NATO,” of the danger, said Peter Bouckaert, head of emergency operations for Human Rights Watch. On Wednesday, a UN envoy Ian Martin told the Security Council that Gaddafi’s regime “accumulated the largest known stockpile of anti-aircraft missiles.”
“Thousands were destroyed during NATO operations. But I have to report to you our increasing concerns over the looting and likely proliferation of MANPADS,” or Man-Portable Air Defense Systems, Martin told the 15-member Security Council. He said munitions and large numbers of mines had also been looted.
UN officials have recently expressed fears that some weapons might already have found their way to rebels in Sudan’s Darfur region or to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.
In one of Sirte’s factories, HRW inspectors discovered “at least 14 empty boxes which once contained a total of 28 SA-24 missiles” Russia’s highly-sophisticated ground-to-air missiles capable of shooting down a civilian airliner, as well as unused SA-7 ground-to-air missiles. Even while the inspectors were there “civilians and armed anti-Gaddafi forces arrived … to take more weapons” while all light automatic weapons “had apparently all been entirely taken.” Further off in the desert, some 120 kilometres south of Sirte, a huge stockpile of arms was found in the sands. Bouckaert estimated it at “tens of thousands of tonnes of ammunition.”
Lost between the hills, with no sign of any guard during the past few days, some 80 concrete bunkers were discovered containing mainly Russian and French munitions.
Artillery shells of all calibres, anti-aircraft ammunition, heat-seeking missiles or others with Semtex explosive warheads, anti-tank missiles, Grad fragmentation rockets, aircraft bombs of 250, 500 and 900 kilograms, vast numbers of RPG-7 grenades, tubing believed to be for the Russian S300 missile, with a 120km range, and spare parts.
The inventory is incomplete.
