Got Glocks?

BAGHDAD (AFP) - They've been searching for months, but the US military has still not got to the bottom of what happened to tens of thousands of small arms handed to Iraqi forces, fearing many are now in the hands of insurgents.

As an example, the Americans delivered 125,163 Austrian-made Glock semi-automatic pistols to Iraqi police between 2003 and late 2006, Pentagon figures shows.

But in October 2006, senior US official Stuart Bowen compared deliveries carried out by a private American subcontractor and Iraqi stocks and discovered that 13,180 Glocks had vanished.

Nine months later, a US Congressional body established that the American military had lost trace of some 190,000 weapons delivered in 2004 and 2005. That figure included 80,000 pistols -- mostly Glocks.