BAGHDAD, June 8: United Nations experts surveyed a looted storage facility at Iraq’s main nuclear site on Sunday under the watchful eyes of the US military, which has placed tight limits on their activities in Iraq.
The seven experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), wearing white protective suits, worked at a storage centre known as Site C, a three-building complex in the vast Tuwaitha compound, 20km south of Baghdad.
US soldiers confiscated the videotape of a Reuters cameraman filming the scene, saying no media coverage was permitted near the once top-secret compound.
The IAEA team arrived in Iraq on Friday on a limited mission to check on looting from the site, where low-enriched uranium known as yellow-cake was stored in barrels.
Looters emptied some of the barrels and sold them to local people for $2 each. U.S. forces say they paid $3 a barrel to recover the stolen items and five radiological devices.
Some locals who unwittingly washed clothes or stored food in the barrels say children are falling ill, but IAEA and U.S. military officials say they believe the health risk is low.
The IAEA team is operating under strict guidelines from the Pentagon, which does not want a renewed role for the agency or other UN arms inspectors in postwar Iraq.—Reuters
