Russia boosted security around a wrecked chemical plant in Chechnya yesterday, to guard radioactive waste that has already killed two teenagers and could arm the "dirty bomb" that Moscow says the republic's rebels may try to build, writes Daniel McLaughlin, in Moscow
Mr Ziva Kadyrov, head of the Rodon facility that stores radioactive waste in Chechnya, said 16 containers of highly contaminated material had been found at the bombed-out chemical complex in the north of the regional capital, Grozny.
A 17th container had been stolen by local teenagers, two of whom had already died from radiation poisoning, Mr Kadyrov told Interfax news agency.
He said the chemical complex would be closely guarded until the radioactive material could be removed, and that a plan for its disposal would be presented shortly to Chechnya's Moscow-backed government.
Mr Kadyrov said 12 "sources of radioactivity" were missing in Chechnya, including material that disappeared from a local university in unexplained circumstances.
He did not specify the nature of the missing substances.
Russian officials, who say Chechnya's rebels are backed by international terror groups including al-Qaeda, have warned that they may build a so-called "dirty bomb", laced with radioactive material stolen from one of Russia's many nuclear facilities where security has crumbled in the decade since the Soviet Union's demise.
Last November Mr Yuri Vishnevsky, the head of Russia's nuclear regulatory agency, said that a small amount of weapons-grade nuclear material had been stolen.
The deputy Atomic Energy Minister, Mr Anatoly Kotelnikov, said in January that Chechen rebels did not possess weapons-grade material.
However, he t admitted that there was a danger of the spraying of radioactive substances, including by use of explosive technologies.
Chechen officials feared the region could be plagued with radioactive waste after the reported bombing by Russian aircraft of the Rodon storage facility in 1995, during the first Chechen war.