American Embassy denies missile claim

The American Embassy has added its own denial to a claim made in a Maltese newspaper on Sunday that US military forces engaged a Libyan missile heading to Malta last month.

The report had already been dismissed as unfounded by Nato and strongly denied by both the Prime Minister and the Libyan Embassy.

“The US Embassy reiterates that on June 12, US military forces operating in the region did not engage a Libyan missile. The embassy has no information on what may have caused the reported sounds of an explosion heard in the area of Dingli on that date,” the embassy said in a statement.

On Sunday, It-Torċa reported that an unexplained, explosion-like sound heard on June 12 in Dingli and surrounding areas was a Libyan Scud missile being intercepted by a Nato missile.

Nato has said it did not see “any evidence of the use of longer-range ballistic weapons such as the Scud missiles.”

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi was scathing about the newspaper on Sunday, calling the report “fictitious and built on heinous lies which do great harm to our country”. The Libyan embassy called the report “completely baseless and false”.

The newspaper’s editor Aleks Farrugia stood by the story.

The sound, which was similar to that of a fireworks factory explosion, remains a mystery and no evidence of a blast or burning has been found.