Libya’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday the country’s caches of chemical weapons, including bombs and artillery shells filled with mustard gas, have been completely destroyed.

“Libya is totally empty of any presence of chemical weapons … which could pose a threat to the safety of people, the environment, or neighboring regions,” Mohammed Abdel-Aziz said in remarks carried by Libya’s state news agency.

The eradication of the weapons, which date from the era of slain dictator Muammar Gadhafi, marks an important success for Libya, even as Syria, its neighbor in the eastern Mediterranean, is struggling to destroy its own chemical weapons hoard amid a civil war.

Libya declared in 2004 it had 25 metric tons of sulfur mustard and 1,400 metric tons of precursor chemicals used to make chemical weapons. It also declared more than 3,500 unfilled aerial bombs designed for use with chemical warfare agents such as sulfur mustard, and three chemical weapons production facilities.

By the start of Libya’s civil war in 2011, the country had destroyed 55 percent of its declared sulfur mustard and 40 percent of the precursor chemicals.

This article appeared in print on page 8 of the February 5th, 2014 edition of Hamodia.