Troops uncover 'huge arms dump'

Troops uncover 'huge arms dump'

A soldier services one of the Lynx helicopters

Soldiers from the Suffolk-based 3 Regiment Army Air Corps have uncovered the biggest arms find of the Iraq war.

The arsenal, estimated to have cost millions of dollars, included weapons that can be converted to deliver deadly chemical.

There were also 50,000 tonnes of shells, rockets and other explosives.

On Wednesday bomb disposal experts from RAF Wittering in Cambridgeshire were looking through the massive cache at a four square kilometre site at Amara in central Iraq.

Lynx helicopters on patrol in southern Iraq

Troops from Wattisham-based 3 Regiment Army Air Corps were tipped off by a local man who approached their Iraqi camp.

Dozens of artillery rockets came from Jordan and 25 American-made anti-tank missiles were found in a bunker.

A British military source said: "Our aim is to destroy all this stuff and clear these areas - we don't want kids picking it up."