Nuclear waste dump looted

2003-05-04 10:47

Washington - A Pentagon team sent to examine a radioactive waste dump in Iraq found it so heavily looted that they could not tell whether dangerous materials had been taken, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.

Pentagon experts have so far visited seven sites associated with Iraq's nuclear program since major combat ended last month. None of them are intact and two had been plundered extensively, the report said.

The Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility, visited on Saturday, stored industrial and medical waste, spent reactor fuel, and the remains of reactors bombed by Israel in 1981 and the United States in 1991, it said.

The site contained materials sought by terrorists interested in using conventional explosives to scatter radioactive dust, the Post said.

It was impossible to tell what dangerous materials, if any, had been removed from the site, and by whom.

On April 11, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the facility and nearby Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center urgently required protection from looters. US Central Command sent soldiers from the Army's Third Infantry Division.

But inspectors visiting the site on Saturday found that the soldiers had not been able to keep looters out, and had moreover been allowing Iraqis who said they were employees of the facility to go inside.

US soldiers detained 62 looters there on Friday but many more escaped, the report said. At one point 400 looters poured into the site daily, it said.

The Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Centre has also been looted but has not been inspected by US forces due to a dispute with the IAEA, the Post said.

- AFX