Libyan fighters make off with Gaddafi ammo

Dozens of fighters of Libya's new rulers swooped down on an unfinished industrial complex in Sirte Wednesday and made off with lorries full of ammunition stored there by forces of Muammer Gaddafi.

At a deserted desert complex on the southeast outskirts of Sirte, row upon row of unfinished cement rooms contained boxes of machine-guns cartridges, rocket-propelled-grenades and Grad rockets, an AFP correspondent taken to the site by the fighters reported.

Fighters say the cache is so large it will take weeks to cart away.

"Yallah, Yallah (Come, Come)," shouted school headmaster turned fighter Muftah Mohammed to his comrades as they formed a chain to remove the boxes and load them on waiting lorries and pick-up trucks.

"This is a gold mine. There are thousands and thousands of ammunition boxes stored here," he told AFP, as sweat trickled down his face and a young fighter standing in a lorry fired his Kalashnikov excitedly in the air shouting !

The reporter saw at least a dozen, mostly single-storey, half-built structures full of green boxes of ammunition.

Mohammed said the cache was one of the biggest discovered since the Libyan civil war erupted in Benghazi in February.

"We will distribute this ammunition to all the brigades wherever they are fighting and use it against Gaddafi's forces. Their own ammunition will be used against them," he said as he handed one box after another to the fighter standing next to him who then passed it along.

A few rooms away another fighter was loading yellow-coloured rockets in a waiting lorry.

"This is a baby Grad rocket," he said laughing and holding one projectile in his hand before carefully putting it on top of several others already lying in the lorry.

Fighter Milad Mohammed, dressed in a green army attire and a cap, said the ammunition was found Tuesday by a group of his comrades who were scouting the area.

He said the large unfinished industrial zone with broken electricity transmission lines and poles attracted their attention.

"I am here since yesterday as one of the guards deployed at this place now. This used to be Gaddafi's ammunition storehouse. This is where our money was going all these years," he said.

"We never wanted this. We wanted freedom and Gaddafi used this to kill us."

Behind the structures was a small make-shift tent which the fighters said used to be occupied by Gaddafi's men stationed there.

A dining table with unwashed plates and bowls, a few cans of orange juice, and some green shirts, trousers and blankets were strewn across the tent, an indication that the occupants had left in a hurry.

Four rooms away another group of fighters were loading ammunition boxes in a lorry which was already mounted with a crane.

"We are taking away as much as we can. We brought every vehicle we had with us," said Omar as he parked the lorry close enough to the building.

Nearby fighter Mohammed shouted "Go, Go, Go away!" to a group who had their lorry full and were driving away, some firing in the air and shouting "Today we are liberating Libya, tomorrow it will be Syria!"

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