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“I should have known it the moment I saw these fins. They’re spring-loaded because they have to snap out when this device leaves its storage tube.”

This was another storage tube for an 81-millimeter mortar round, found by The New York Times beside a mortar used by anti-Qaddafi forces skirmishing last summer with loyalist forces on the desert flatlands north of the Nafusa mountains.

In the case of the photograph above, the sticker had been affixed to a storage tube for an 81-millimeter white-phosphorous mortar round with a point-detonating fuze.

Encased in a green storage tube with a flip-lock lid, the weapon has liquid sloshing inside a bulbous head reeking with a putrid odor that burns the nostrils.