‘Light at the end of the tunnel’ as police probe continues into missing TNT

The defence ministry is awaiting police findings it hopes will conclude the investigation into 13.6 kilograms of TNT that went missing during a national guard training exercise, Defence Minister Vassilis Palmas announced on Thursday.

Speaking after fresh scrutiny of the case, Palmas said the police remained the critical factor in locating the missing explosives.

“The police are continuing their investigations, and we hope that in the coming period we will have developments regarding the location of the explosives,” he affirmed.

The TNT disappeared on January 29 during an engineer training exercise at the Kalo Chorio firing range in the Larnaca district.

The exercise involved a controlled detonation which failed to ignite.

Following standard safety procedures, personnel waited before returning to the site, only to find that two explosive devices were no longer there.

Drone footage later confirmed that the explosives had been in place shortly before their disappearance, ruling out an unrecorded blast and narrowing the timeframe in which they could have been removed.

Authorities subsequently began treating the incident as a possible theft, while sealing off the area and launching parallel police and administrative investigations.

Palmas confirmed that the internal investigation within the national guard has been completed and its findings submitted.

The minister further reiterated that the national guard chief, Emmanuel Theodorou, after evaluating the report, “will unfortunately impose penalties on officers who did not perform their duties during the training exercise.”

Palmas declined to elaborate on individual responsibilities or testimonies, citing the integrity of the process.

 “I do not want to go into details. These are issues that concern the internal process, and anything said further may be detrimental to the process of the testimonies and the conclusion,” he insisted, remarking that “a fairly large number of individuals” had provided statements.

Asked whether the explosives could now be outside military control, Palmas replied that “since they have been lost, all possibilities are open.”

In subsequent remarks over the weekend, Palmas acknowledged that the administrative inquiry identified “serious omissions and dereliction of duty” by officers involved in the exercise.

“What matters most to society is the criminal investigation and finding the explosives that were lost due to unprofessional conduct,” he said, warning repeatedly that the quantity involved “poses great risk to human lives” if it ends up “in the hands of individuals with illegal intentions.”

Defence ministry sources have said that changes within the senior command, including the discharge of brigadier-general, Alkis Alkiviades, following routine evaluations, do not affect either the substance or timetable of the disciplinary process.

The final report will be completed by another senior officer in active service, with ultimate decisions resting with the chief of the general staff, Georgios Karayiannis.