Stolen US weapons 'sold on streets'

New York - Hi-tech weapons of war are being stolen routinely from US military arsenals and sold on the streets through the black market, CBS News reported. Since the Gulf war, it said, the military had lost track of anti-aircraft missiles, plastic explosives, anti-tank rockets, machine guns and tons of other war material.

It said that a National Guardsman convicted on Friday in Michigan for stealing gun parts was part of a theft ring that operated undetected for eight years, out of a state armory. CBS said the ring sold parts to a dealer who supplied, among others, the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas.

The congressional General Accounting Office had found that armouries across the US routinely failed to keep proper records and maintained insecure computer systems and facilities, CBS reported. Police were finding more military weapons on the streets than the Pentagon was willing to admit had been lost. Reuter