Washington -- American intelligence agencies have tripled their formal estimate of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile systems believed to be at large worldwide, after determining that at least 4,000 of the weapons from Iraq's pre-war arsenals cannot be accounted for, government officials said Friday.
A new government estimate says a total of 6,000 of the weapons, known as man-portable air-defense systems, or Manpads, may be outside the control of any government, up from a previous estimate of 2,000, officials said.
The officials said they did not know whether missiles from Iraq remain there or have been smuggled into other countries, though a senior administration official said Friday that "there is no evidence that they have left the country."
It was unclear whether Iraqi military or intelligence personnel removed the missile systems during the initial invasion of Iraq or whether they disappeared from Iraqi warehouses after major combat ended.
Shoulder-fired missiles, which are small, lethal and easy to use, are attractive weapons for terrorists. In recent months, Western intelligence and law enforcement agencies have repeatedly warned that al Qaeda intends to use them to shoot down planes. In 2002, attackers who launched two small Russian- made SA-7 missiles almost hit a commercial aircraft taking off from Mombasa, Kenya.
The new estimate of a larger number of the missile systems was discussed at a classified Defense Intelligence Agency conference in Alabama this week, the officials said. They declined to discuss the methodology by which the new estimate had been reached, saying that it was classified.
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