10/02/2011
BENGHAZI, Libya (AFP) – Almost 7,000 SAM-7 anti-aircraft missiles from ousted Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi’s arsenal have gone missing, a military official of the country’s new leadership said on Saturday.
‘Gaddafi’s Libya bought about 20,000 SAM-7 missiles, Soviet- or Bulgarian-manufactured,’ General Mohammed Adia, in charge of armaments at the defence ministry, said at a symbolic ceremony to disable some of the stockpile.
‘More than 14,000 of these missiles were used, destroyed or are now out of commission. Most of them were stockpiled in Zintan,’ south-west Libya, he said.
‘About 5,000 of the SAM-7s are still missing … Unfortunately, some of these missiles could have fallen into the wrong hands … abroad,’ the general told reporters at a former arms depot of Gaddafi’s forces in Benghazi.
