Space photos of Iraq weapons site studied

WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 (UPI) -- The Pentagon is studying satellite photos of the Iraqi munitions dump where 380 tons of explosives went missing, CBS News reported Thursday.

Of interest is the number of trucks seen arriving and leaving the al-Qaqaa facility prior to the arrival of U.S. troops in April 2003. The Pentagon is trying to correlate the specific geographic coordinates of the bunkers where the explosives were stored with the satellite photos to see if there is evidence the trucks were parked outside those bunkers.

Also Thursday, a Minnesota local news channel announced it had footage of U.S. soldiers examining large quantities of explosives and ammunition on April 18 at al-Qaqaa and then leaving the bunkers unlocked and unguarded. Station 5 Eyewitness News passed the footage on to the U.S. government to determine whether any of the pictured material is related to the missing explosives.

The Iraqi government said the material was lost to looting due to poor security after the U.S. invasion, and U.S. commanders have acknowledged when troops visited the site that April, they did not conduct an extensive search for munitions. Neither did they guard the site when they left.

Meanwhile, an infantry commander who was at the facility in April said Wednesday it is "very highly improbable" that someone could have trucked out so much material once U.S. forces arrived in the area.

Army Col. David Perkins said two major roads that pass near the installation were filled with U.S. military traffic in the weeks after April 3, 2003, when U.S. troops first reached the area.