Forward from mart
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----- Original Message -----
From: Vicki Andrada
Sent: Monday, November 01, 2004 1:12 AM
Subject: [Fwd: [CANESI] Reporter Saw
Insurgents Loot Qaqaa Arms Depot.]
www.truthout.org/docs_04/110104F.shtml
Reporter Saw Insurgents Loot
Qaqaa Arms Depot
By Katrin Bennhold
The International Herald Tribune
Saturday 30 October 2004
Paris - A French journalist who visited the Qaqaa munitions depot
south of Baghdad in November last year said she witnessed Islamic
insurgents looting vast supplies of explosives more than six months
after the demise of Saddam Hussein's regime.
The account of Sara Daniel, which will be published Wednesday
in the French weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, lends further weight
to allegations that American occupying forces in Iraq failed to
protect hundreds of tons of munitions from extremists plotting
attacks against their own troops.
Much of the controversy has centered around the disappearance
of about 380 tons of the powerful HMX explosive. The material,
which had been monitored by the International Atomic Energy
Agency before the war and subsequently sealed in bunkers by
its inspectors, was reported missing by Iraqi officials earlier this
month.
Daniel, who spent nearly two hours at Qaqaa with a group that has
since become known as the Islamic Army of Iraq, could not confirm
seeing buildings that carried the agency's seal or explosives that
were marked to be of the HMX variety. But her report is one of
terrorists having easy access to a vast weapons inventory.
"I was utterly stupefied to see that a place like that was pretty
much unguarded and that insurgents could help themselves for
months on end," Daniel said on Friday. "We were there for a
long time and no one disturbed the group while they were
loading their truck."
A man who identified himself as Abu Abdallah and led the
group Daniel was with, told her that his men and numerous
other insurgent groups had rushed to Qaqaa after U.S.-led
troops captured Baghdad on April 9 last year. The groups
stole truck-loads of material from what used to be the
biggest explosive factory in the Middle East in the expectation
that coalition forces would move quickly to seal it off, Daniel
was told.
Abu Abdullah and his men showed her the arsenal of rocket
launchers, grenades and explosives hidden near their small
farm houses, she said.
But much to the insurgents' surprise, Qaqaa was not sealed
off by U.S. soldiers, leading many groups to stop hoarding
and instead going for regular refills of explosive materials,
according to Abu Abdullah.
Daniel said she saw how poorly guarded the munitions complex
was.During the drive there last November, she recalled seeing
few patrols and "far away" from the site. The truck was stopped
only once, for about three minutes, Daniel said, by a U.S. soldier
in a tank.
Daniel said those who went to Qaqaa to stock up on munitions
appeared ready to use them to attack the occupying forces.
On Nov. 22, a few days after her visit at Qaqaa, Abu Abdallah's
group fired a surface-to-air missile at a DHL cargo-plane. The
men gave her a video tape of themselves launching the attack
in which she says she clearly recognized Abu Abdallah.
Daniel said she decided to write about her experience
at Qaqaa after the disappearance of the HMX explosive
became a key dispute in the U.S. presidential election
campaign.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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