The Libyan army recovers the lost uranium…and a video of the barrels

In a sudden and rapid plan, the Libyan army announced the recovery of uranium, which the International Atomic Energy Agency declared lost yesterday.

In a statement on the account of the Director of the Moral Guidance Department, Khaled Mahjoub, on Facebook, today, Thursday, he refuted what was stated in the IAEA report on the loss of 2.5 tons of uranium. He explained that members of the IAEA visited the uranium site in southern Libya in 2020, and the existing number was inventoried, and the warehouse door was closed with red wax.

He also added that an agreement had been reached with the agency, given the seriousness of these materials, to assign female guards to preserve them. He confirmed that Massimo Abaro, Deputy Director General of the Agency, pledged to provide the needs of the guards, which include special clothes and masks to protect them from diseases caused by this substance, such as paralysis, sterility, and others, but the IAEA did not provide them, which prompted the army, according to al-Mahgoub, to put guards on A far distance from the uranium barrels to ensure their safety.

The disappearance of 10 barrels

However, he pointed out that Massimo came last Wednesday to the office of the Secretary-General of the Libyan Army, reporting the disappearance of 10 barrels, and the existence of an opening in the warehouse that allows the smuggling of those barrels.

The army moved and took the appropriate measures to find the missing quantities, and those barrels were actually found in an area that is only 5 km from the warehouse in the direction of the Chadian border.

He concluded by presenting video evidence of this, the quantities found, pointing out that the army is waiting for the Agency’s specialists to deal with those barrels.

About 2.5 tons of uranium

Yesterday, Wednesday, the IAEA announced in a statement to member states that its inspectors had discovered the loss of about 2.5 tons of natural uranium from a Libyan site that is no longer under government control. Rafael Grossi, director general of the UN agency, said in the confidential statement that the agency’s inspectors discovered during an inspection on Tuesday that “10 cylinders containing approximately 2.5 tons of natural uranium in the form of raw uranium concentrates had been declared (Libya) … to be stored.” On the site it is not there.

He also warned that “ignorance of the current location of nuclear materials may pose a radiological hazard in addition to nuclear security concerns.”

It is noteworthy that such events worry the international community, especially since the country has not witnessed peace since 2011 until today, and many militias and armed groups are still outside the control of states, although the last major bout of conflict ended in 2020.

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