A Soviet-era anthrax dump on Vozrozhdeniye Island in the Aral Sea is completely unguarded, today’s London Telegraph reported.  The dump contains enough anthrax spores to kill the world’s population several times over in metal drums a few feet beneath the surface, according to the newspaper. 

Russia withdrew guards from the site in 1992, and neither Kazakhstan nor Uzbekistan, who split ownership of the island, have provided their own security.  The U.S. Defense Department has plans to begin helping decontaminate the island and destroy the biological weapons facilities later this year.

Sonya Ben Ouagrham of the Monterey Institute for International Studies said a terrorist could easily go to the site and dig up the spores, but the spores may no longer be virulent, so the terrorists would require time and money to test them.

Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev denied the existence of the Soviet Union’s illicit biological warfare program and invited Western authorities to tour facilities as proof the country was honoring the Biological Weapons Treaty.  To prepare for the visit, scientists secretly moved hundreds of tons of anthrax spores to the Vozrozhdeniye Island dump (Ben Aris, London Telegraph, Oct. 4). 

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