Sitting in row after row, each 15 long by four high, the blue barrels are as frightening as any remnant of the Gaddafi regime.
A rebel fighter among the yellowcake drums in the warehouse near the city of Sabha. The stockpile was abandoned and unguarded Photo: DAVID ROSE
By Richard Spencer, Sabha
9:00PM BST 25 Sep 2011
Some are marked radioactive, as were the open plastic bags alongside.
The powder they contain appears to be yellowcake uranium from neighbouring Niger. Yet when they were discovered by advancing rebel forces last week, they were abandoned, in tumbledown warehouses protected only by a low wall.
Niger mines yellowcake under a strict security regime designed to ensure none of it falls into the hands of illicit networks. But post-Gaddafi Libya affords little or no protection to this vast haul of material, which if refined to high levels of purity is the essential element of a nuclear bomb.
The Daily Telegraph reported last week that Iran, which is pursuing underground nuclear programmes, had joined in the looting of Libyan weaponry.
Despite the dangers, international atomic agencies and Libya’s rebels say it will take weeks to put safeguards in place.
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There are at least 10,000 drums with a total capacity of two million litres, though most have not been opened and checked for their contents. They are being stored not far from the southern desert city of Sabha.
The International Atomic Energy Agency says it knew that Col Muammar Gaddafi had stockpiled yellowcake uranium near Sabha – a relic of the years when he tried to develop nuclear weapons after obtaining blueprints from the Pakistani scientist, AQ Khan.
“We can confirm that there is yellowcake stored in drums at a site near Sabha in central Libya,” a spokesman said. “The IAEA has tentatively scheduled safeguard activities at this location once the situation in the country stabilises.”
After agreeing to dismantle the programme in 2003, Gaddafi was supposed to have given up all his nuclear technology. He was also supposed to have given up chemical weapons, but it is known he still had mustard gas awaiting disposal.
A WikiLeaks cable disclosed that two years ago he was trying to sell 1,000 metric tons of yellowcake on the world market. No one expected such a valuable commodity to have been left dumped in the desert.
Sabha was an important stronghold for Gaddafi, who spent part of his youth here, and many of the locals are from the Gaddafi tribe. Abdullah Senussi, his security chief, right-hand man and brother-in-law, is from a town 50 miles to the north.
But the city was only lightly defended. A total of 12 rebels died in the fighting, with just one or two parts of the town resisting at all.
Having driven out the remnants of the Gaddafi forces towards the Algerian border, the rebel troops said they were ordered to secure former military bases — a standard practice adopted belatedly to stop weapons stockpiles going missing.
They found the storage facility containing the radioactive drums totally unguarded. “I don’t think it’s ever been guarded,” said Musbah al-Mangoush, an agricultural engineer from the town who escaped Gaddafi’s grip three months ago and returned at the head of a brigade of troops from Benghazi.
“This was a military base until the 1990s, but then it was abandoned. There was no one here.”
In neighbouring sheds are rusting trucks, old fuel tanks, and surface-to-air missiles covered in pigeon droppings.
It is not clear how long the material has been there. Mohammed Othman, whose family owns a farm five miles further up the track away from Sabha, says soldiers were seen unloading trucks in the area a year ago. Mr Mangoush, on the other hand, links the find to what he claims is a high level of miscarriage and deformity in babies in the area, suggesting a longer term presence.
Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the president of the provisional government, the National Transitional Council, said at a press conference on Sunday that a second find of illegal material had been made near the town of Waddan — believed to be mustard gas. “There are weapons believed to be internationally forbidden, and they are under our control,” he said.
The United States previously said that Gaddafi’s yellowcake stocks were held at the town of Tajoura east of Tripoli and were “secure”.
The real site is now guarded by half a dozen rebel troops.
Fighting has moved on to the border town of Ghat, leaving virtually all the south of Libya, with its important oilfields, in the hands of the rebels.
Of Gaddafi himself, there is now no sign.
“Tell us if you find him,” is the commonest response to questions concerning his whereabouts.
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