Global Security Newswire

Estimates that more than 1,000 World War II-era chemical weapons were dumped off the northeastern coast of Australia might be too low, Australia’s Townsville Bulletin reported today (see GSN, April 22, 2003).

At least 700 30-kilogram and 320 45-kilogram mustard agent bombs were dumped off the coast of Townsville at the end of World War II, the Bulletin reported. A new Australian government report says, however, that there may be even more weapons, given poor record keeping during the dumping and incomplete cataloguing of old archives.

Inventories show that one Townsville chemical weapons depot contained about 16,000 mustard gas bombs, according to the Bulletin. The government paper says that it was “very unlikely” that those munitions were transported to other dumping sites in the state of Queensland.

The Australian and U.S. militaries left at least 21,030 tons of chemical warfare munitions in Australian seas after the war, the report states.

The paper also says that the risk to the public from the chemical weapons is “virtually nil” and that recovery of the dumped munitions was unnecessarily risky (Roberta Mancuso, Townsville Bulletin, April 5).