The IAEA has warned that 2.5 tonnes of uranium has gone missing from a nuclear power plant in Libya

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported this information on Wednesday About 2.5 tons of natural uranium has disappeared from a site in Libya that is not under government control.

During a visit on Tuesday, IAEA inspectors “found it 10 containers containing about 2.5 tons of natural uranium in the form of uranium concentrate (Yellow cakes) are not where they were declared by the authorities,” the organization’s director general, Raffaele Croci, wrote in a statement to member states.

The UN body has indicated that it will carry out inspections.Additional“Clarifying the circumstances under which this nuclear material disappeared and its current location”. No details were provided about the site in question.

The discovery was made on Tuesday as a result of a study originally planned last year that “had to be postponed due to the security situation in the region”.

“Lack of knowledge of current location of nuclear material may present radiological risk and nuclear safety concerns”The IAEA said getting to the site would require “complex logistics”.

Libya left 2003 Its nuclear weapons development program was developed under the command of the former president Muammar Gaddafi. The country has centrifuges capable of enriching uranium and, although little progress has been made in making a nuclear bomb, it has information on designing a nuclear bomb.

After the fall of Gaddafi in 2011 after 42 years of dictatorial rule, Libya was plunged into a crisis. A serious political crisisRival forces dividing the country into East and West, and endless militias and mercenaries scattered across the border, against a background of foreign intervention.

Two governments are fighting for power, one in Tripoli (west) and the UN. recognized, while the other is backed by Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the strongman in eastern Libya.

Libya’s interim government, installed by a UN-backed peace plan in early 2021, was supposed to last until elections scheduled for December that year, which have yet to take place, and whose legitimacy is now in question.

With information from AFP and Reuters

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