IAEA Team Inspects Uranium Storage Site South Libya

A cleaning staff works before a news conference attended by IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi during an IAEA Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, September 13, 2021. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger
A cleaning staff works before a news conference attended by IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi during an IAEA Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, September 13, 2021. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger
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IAEA Team Inspects Uranium Storage Site South Libya

A cleaning staff works before a news conference attended by IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi during an IAEA Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, September 13, 2021. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger
A cleaning staff works before a news conference attended by IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi during an IAEA Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, September 13, 2021. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger

A team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arrived Tuesday in southern Libya to inspect a natural uranium storage site containing 6,400 barrels, Fawasel media reported.

The site said the IAEA team arrived in Sabha airport in southern Libya coming from Vienna.

“The team left Libya after completing the inspection process for the uranium in Libya,” Fawasel said, adding that the UN inspectors also visited many other sites in the south.

Last week, Gen Khaled al-Mahjoub, head of a media unit for the Libyan National Army, the main eastern military force, said that a military team had found 2.5 tons of radioactive uranium.

His comments came after the director general of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, told the organization’s member states that inspectors had found that 10 drums containing approximately 2.5 tons of uranium ore concentrate “were not present as previously declared”.

The Libyan General said 10 missing barrels had been recovered about 5 km from the warehouse, near the border with Chad.

Mahjoub suggested that they were stolen by Chadian forces who mistook them for ammunition or weapons, then abandoned them when they realized the drums were of little use.

He said the Chadian forces raided the warehouse and may have taken the barrels hoping they contained weapons or ammunition.



Cyprus Leader Becomes First Foreign Dignitary to Visit Lebanon’s New President

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun (R) meets with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides (L), at the presidential palace in Baabda, east of Beirut, Lebanon, 10 January 2025. (EPA)
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun (R) meets with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides (L), at the presidential palace in Baabda, east of Beirut, Lebanon, 10 January 2025. (EPA)
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Cyprus Leader Becomes First Foreign Dignitary to Visit Lebanon’s New President

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun (R) meets with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides (L), at the presidential palace in Baabda, east of Beirut, Lebanon, 10 January 2025. (EPA)
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun (R) meets with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides (L), at the presidential palace in Baabda, east of Beirut, Lebanon, 10 January 2025. (EPA)

Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides has become the foreign head of state and first foreign dignitary to pay an official visit to Lebanon's new President Joseph Aoun.

Aoun, the former commander of the Lebanese army, was elected Thursday by the Lebanese parliament to fill a more than two-year vacuum in the presidency.

“I wanted to be the first to visit President Aoun and show, not in words but in actions that Cyprus stands by Lebanon and the Lebanese people,” Christodoulides told reporters afterward.

They discussed energy, security, trade and shipping, his office said in a written statement.

Cyprus and Lebanon have had close relations for decades. In recent years the two countries have been involved in intense discussions over border control, as many Syrian refugees living in Lebanon — and an increasing number of Lebanese since the country's major economic crisis began in 2019 — sought to reach Cyprus by sea in smuggler boats.

Cyprus is less than 200 kilometers (130 miles) from the Lebanese capital Beirut and they share maritime borders in waters where undersea natural gas deposits are believed to lie.