WASHINGTON, Oct 28: A US newspaper report on Thursday alleged that Russian special forces "almost certainly" removed the explosives missing from a military base south of Baghdad before the US invasion and sent them to Syria, Lebanon and possibly Iran.

The Washington Times daily, quoting a US official, said: "The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units ... Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis," deputy undersecretary of defence for international technology security John Shaw told the daily in an interview.

The official said he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high explosive material that went missing from the Al Aqua military facility south of Baghdad.

The missing 380 tons of explosives over which the International Atomic Energy Agency raised the alert earlier this month have become fodder in the US presidential campaign, with John Kerry accusing incumbent President George Bush of incompetence in his handling of post-invasion Iraq.

It is not clear whether the explosives - which are used in plastic explosives and could also be used in a trigger for a nuclear device - were removed from the site before or after the invasion.

The Washington Times source is the first to give a clear indication of when the explosives were removed.

Mr Shaw, who was in charge of cataloguing the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.

He alleged Iraq's most powerful weapons were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran.

The Al Qaqaa facility, he added, was closely guarded, making it unlikely the explosives could have been stolen.

"That was such a pivotal location, Number 1, that the mere fact of (special explosives) disappearing was impossible," he said. "And Number 2, if the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there."

Separately, The New York Times - which broke the story of the missing explosives on Monday - said looters stormed Al Qaqaa after the invasion.

Citing three witnesses, the daily said some of the looters came in trucks to haul off munitions, dismantled heavy machinery and office furniture.

The New York Times said that while the accounts did not address the question of when the 380 tons of explosives went missing, they "make clear that what set off much if not all of the looting was the arrival and swift departure of American troops, who did not secure the site after inducing the Iraqi forces to abandon it."

US Army Colonel David Perkins, who commanded the brigade that first entered the Al-Qaqaa site in March 2003 said Wednesday his men only conducted a cursory search of the facility because their priority was to continue the march on Baghdad.

"The main focus was not go back and do a very precise inventory of how many shells and things like that because it was just not the threat at the time," he told reporters.

'MADE-UP NONSENSE: Russia slammed as "made-up nonsense" the report that its forces had removed the explosives.