'We'll use US weapons on US'

2004-10-28 11:45

Baghdad - An armed group claimed in a video obtained on Thursday to have obtained a huge amount of explosives missing from a munitions depot facility in Iraq and warned that it will use them if foreign troops threaten Iraqi cities.

A group calling itself Al-Islam's Army Brigades, Al-Karar Brigade, claimed "heroic mujahedeen have managed by the grace of God and by co-ordinating with a... number of the officers and the soldiers of the American intelligence to obtain a very huge amount of the explosives that were in the al-Qaqaa facility, which was under the protection of the American forces"

The group's claim couldn't be independently verified. The speaker was surrounded by masked, armed men standing in front of a black banner with the group's name on it in the tape obtained by Associated Press Television News.

"We promise God and the Iraqi people that we will use it against the occupation forces and those who co-operate with them in the event of these forces threatening any Iraqi city," the man added.

400t of weapons missing

Nearly 400 tons of conventional explosives have disappeared from the al-Qaqaa facility south of Baghdad, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The United Nations agency's chief Mohamed ElBaradei reported the disappearance to the UN Security Council on Monday, two weeks after Iraqi officials told the nuclear agency that 342 metric tons (377 US tons) of explosives had vanished as a result of "theft and looting ... due to lack of security."

The disappearance of the explosives has become a huge campaign issue in the US presidential election.

- AP