Associated Press
March 28th, 2007 @ 8:25pm

STEELE, Ala. (AP) - Workers scouring the site of a World War II chemical weapons training camp in northeast Alabama have found 13 mortars filled with liquid, but they have yet to determine if any of them contained hazardous agents, the military said Wednesday.

A similar mortar found in 2001 contained phosgene, a choking agent that can kill if inhaled.

Testing to determine what is inside the most recently recovered shells will happen within a few weeks, said Pat Robbins, a spokesman with the Army Corps of Engineers.

"It could be water, it could be chemicals. We just don't know," he said.

The munitions are being stored in a protective container and will be destroyed after tests identify the liquid, Robbins said.

"They're in a safe facility on site. They're no danger to anyone," he said.

The unexploded shells were found over the past year at what was Camp Sibert, the nation's largest chemical weapons school during World War II. The Army closed the post after the war and sold the nearly 38,000-acre base for a few dollars per acre after removing tons of debris.

The camp trained about 5,000 troops from 1942 to 1945 with chemical agents, including mustard gas and lewisite, which cause blistering and can be fatal if inhaled. Nearly 50,000 people live on or near the old base property, much of which is farmland.

The state ordered the Pentagon to clean up the land last year after a study ranked the area as worst in the nation among old military sites for the hazard of unexploded weapons. Robbins said the cleanup will cost about $6 million annually and will last about two more years.

Steele is 45 miles northeast of Birmingham.