By IANS/AKI,
Washington : The ouster of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has given an opportunity to Al Qaeda and other militant outfits to stockpile large amounts of weapons, including chemical and biological weapons, US President Barack Obama’s chief counter-terrorism adviser has said.
“We have indications that individuals of various stripes are looking to Libya and seeing it as an arms bazaar,” said John Brennan, assistant to the president for homeland security and counter-terrorism.
“We are concerned about the potential for certain weapons to get into the hands of terrorists,” he said.
Gaddafi is also known to have accumulated a large stockpile of mustard gas. Recently seized documents suggest that in its final hours, the Gaddafi-led regime shipped large numbers of gas masks and chemical-protection suits to bases of support, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
Human Rights Watch has said there were 20,000 surface-to-air missiles in Libya, and many of those are now missing.