CHEMICAL weapons inspectors have confirmed that they are investigating reports that Libya’s mustard gas storage facility in the Sahara desert had been broken into before it fell under rebel control earlier this week.
The facility, called the Bunker, is one of Libya’s most secret sites, and contains nine tonnes of mustard gas held by the regime, said Bob Fairweather, an official with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Headquartered in The Hague in the Netherlands, it had been inspecting the site before the war.
“There is this rumour that there’s a door broken down, we’re been in contact with the Libyan national authority,” he said. “We are checking on the veracity of the story.”
A Libyan rebel fighter, Muhsen al Gubbi, who was detailed to inspect the facility this week, told The Irish Timeshe was one of 25 fighters issued with protective suits and told to patrol the facility looking for loyalist units. It was during this inspection that he saw that one of the three sheds was broken open.
“Nato said to us ‘don’t touch three sheds, numbers 105, 106, and 107’,” said Al Gubbi, from Misurata’s Chain Brigade, formed earlier this month for special missions. “We went in with masks, we don’t know what is inside. One of the gates was open, Nato told us no one can go inside.”
The news will cause acute anxiety among outside powers who will fear that Muammar Gadafy, still at large in Libya, may use the gas on rebel forces or that it might find its way abroad.
More than a month after the fall of Tripoli, loyalist forces continue to hold out in the coastal city of Sirte and at Beni Walid, 144km (90 miles) south of Tripoli.
Libya joined the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in 2004 and promised to destroy its chemical and biological warfare agents. The organisation said the Gadafy regime had completed the destruction of 3,500 bombs and missiles capable of being armed with chemical warheads, but had yet to complete the process of destroying its stocks.
The remaining stock of mustard gas, a lethal blister agent that burns skin on contact, is stored at the Bunker, a site 8km north of the town of Waddan. Mr Al Gubbi said Nato was taking intense precautions to protect the site and that a week before, two bombs had been dropped close to a group of rebel fighters from the nearby town of Waddan who had gone into the site looking for weapons.
In August the Pentagon said it had been keeping the facility under surveillance with drone aircraft. Mr Al Gubbi said his unit had been told that any unauthorised movement into the base would meet lethal force from Nato jets.
Mr Faithweather said no inspection team would be sent to the site until Libya’s vast southern desert, where some loyalist units continue to roam, was fully secure. “The responsibility [for securing the chemicals] rests with the state party,” he said.