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French police search for missing explosives

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Saturday, July 19, 2008

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Counter-terrorism police in France are searching for 28 kg (~61 lbs) of the plastic explosive Semtex and detonators that have gone missing.

The explosives were discovered to be missing on Friday, but could have left the facility up to a week ago. They were stored at a site in Corbas, near Lyon in east-central France, which disposes of left-over munitions from the two world wars.

Both Corbas and Lyon are in the Rhône department.

The Minister of the Interior, Michèle Alliot-Marie said that the incident was due to "known failings within the site's own security." She added that the director of the site, which was originally a 19th century fort, has been "immediately suspended."

"A theft of explosives used by bomb disposal experts to destroy munitions retrieved from former battlefields has taken place on a site adjacent to the supply depot," read a statement from the ministry, officially calling it a theft.

"The presence of explosives in this site is normal, but the investigation has to find out how they could have been stolen," an unnamed source told Agence France-Presse.

Semtex was invented in 1966 and is a malleable plastic explosive. It is noted for being odorless and notorious for its involvement in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing in 1988.


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This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
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