- Forces of the Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar said they found the missing material close to the storage site.
- Inspectors from the United Nations announced that they found missing uranium in southern Libya.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said earlier this month that some 2.5 tons of natural uranium stored at a site in the southern town of Sabha had gone missing. Forces of the Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar said they found the missing material close to the storage site. In a statement to The Associated Press (AP) on Saturday, the Vienna-based agency said U.N. inspectors visited the area on March 21 and saw the material being transferred to the storage site.
The IAEA said, however, there was no immediate radiological risk at the location. The statement said investigations were still underway, including reconciling the quantities of natural uranium at the site with those previously verified by the IAEA. The IAEA said its director-general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, informed member states on Friday about the visit’s findings.
The material dates back to the rule of late dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who stored thousands of barrels of so-called yellowcake uranium for a once-planned uranium conversion facility that was never built in his decades long secret weapons program. Estimates put the Libyan stockpile at some 1,000 metric tons of yellowcake uranium under Gadhafi, who declared his nascent nuclear weapons program to the world in 2003 after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Following the IAEA’s revelations in mid-March that some 2.5 tons of natural uranium had gone missing in Libya, Haftar’s forces said they found the drums some 5 kilometers (3 miles) south of the facility. In a statement, Haftar’s forces claimed that Chadian separatist fighters, who operate in the region, likely attempted to steal the drums after mistaking them for weapons and ammunition. However, Haftar’s forces provided no evidence for the accusation.
Source: Daily Sabah