A US spy satellite photographed some 60 trucks moving about a known biological weapons facility six miles northwest of Baghdad, the Washington Times daily said on Wednesday.
”They’re moving stuff in or out,” said a US intelligence official familiar with the report.
The paper said the unusual activity was spotted at a facility once called the Taji Single Cell Protein Plant, which the Iraqis converted into a biological weapons facility that was bombed during the 1991, US-led Gulf War.
The report follows indications that President George Bush intends to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by military force for pursuing the covert development of weapons of mass destruction and supporting international terrorism.
After the Gulf War that expelled Iraqi invasion forces from Kuwait, the Taji plant was found to have produced hundreds of litres of Botulinum toxin during the late 1980s, the daily said.
UN weapons inspectors also destroyed long-range missiles at the Taji facility after the Gulf War and before Iraq expelled all inspection teams in 1998.
A specialist in Iraq’s weapons programs said it was unusual to see a column of trucks involved in biological-arms programs.
”Most of what Iraq is doing in the biological-weapons area is either underground or in small mobile vehicles,” said Kelly Motz. ”They could be moving equipment into a site that was renovated,” she added. – Sapa-AFP