Colombian police are investigating the discovery of a box containing radioactive material, including uranium and plutonium, which has prompted a major security alert in the city of Cali.
Specialist police and fire units as well as Colombian air force officials attended the scene in the neighborhood of El Troncal, in the north east of the city, on Monday afternoon after the alarm was raised by local residents.
Several streets were cordoned off and homes and businesses evacuated as teams in hazmat suits investigated the polystyrene container. It was feared the box could contain a bomb; however instead, two bars of radioactive material weighing approximately five kilos (11lb) were discovered, composed of uranium, plutonium and iridium.
After a five-hour operation in the neighbourhood, a radiological emergencies team was sent in to remove it to an unnamed site in an unpopulated area for final disposal.
Authorities on Tuesday had yet to determine the source of the material and how or why it came to be left in the densely populated neighborhood. Local residents quoted in El Espectador, a leading Colombian daily, said that a man had approached a shop carrying the box and claiming to have a delivery; he then disappeared from one moment to the next, leaving the package next to some nearby chairs.
“They initially said it was a bomb, but later they advised us it was possibly a chemical agent. They asked us all to come out of our houses and move to more than 100 metres away,” Rodrigo Hernández, head of the neighbourhood’s action committee, told the paper.
Officials later sought to calm local fears of contamination, saying that while the materials were highly dangerous, they did not pose a risk to human life in the quantities found and at that length of exposure. However three people who initially opened the box to inspect it were reported to have undergone specialist checks.
Alberto Hernandez, risk management director for the Cali fire service, told reporters that the materials could have originated in the medical or petrochemical industries.