AFP just published a very interesting account of secret NATO teams guarding Gadhafi's weapons of mass destruction depots with bombs that were able to take out a car while leaving the occupants unhurt.
Before Tripoli fell, NATO guarded his known chemical weapons depots from the air, maintaining near constant surveillance from them and ready to drop bombs on any government troops that showed up to remove the weapons for use against Libyan rebels. When those depots fell into rebel hands, special teams of Western intelligence agents operating from the rebels' headquarters at Benghazi moved to secure the sites.
Here's where things get weird. Western operators protecting the weapons depots are apparenly using these "stun bombs" against anyone, rebels inclcuded, who approach the sites:
Per AFP:
Today, a team of American and Libyans, including Safi ad-Din, is based in Waddan to deal with the problems. The Americans, pistol on hips, scowled when journalists approached them, refusing any comment."It's the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency)," said a senior military officer from Misrata who had met them.
The watch over the mustard gas, at Waddan as well as the two other sites whose location is kept secret, is tight, according to the Libyan expert and local fighters.
"Three weeks ago, the car of two fighters was destroyed by an air strike as they got too near the bunkers containing the gas" at Waddan, without anybody even being hurt, laughed Ahmed Misrati, a fighter.
Stun bombs had also already been used against other fighters roaming on the site some days earlier, recalled Safi ad-Din who said that all the curious ones risk an air strike if they get closer than 50 metres (yards) to the chemical bunkers.
Libyan rebels reporting that they are being stun bombed, eh? Who knows if they were really hit with a magic weapon that destroyed their vehicles but left the occupants unhurt. I'm not aware of anyone creating an air dropped version of a stun grenade. Even a low-collateral damage weapon like the Focused Lethality Munition version of the Small Diameter Bomb would put a serious hurt on the occupants of a small vehicle. Heck, maybe they were hit with a small version of those concrete bombs that France was dropping in Libya. Or maybe they were extremely well placed shots from a helicopter-borne sniper.
These tales of stun bombs could simply be the locals way of scaring off the curious. Then again, the West may very well be employing previously undisclosed weapons in the effort to guard WMD -- something NATO says is a top priority.
