Somali Children Show Marines Old 40-Foot Rockets : Africa: The six missiles are believed to be the biggest weapons found by troops. Some of warheads could still be active.

Children showed off a dangerous playground of 40-foot rockets, launchers and concrete bunkers Friday, and 1,000 American troops stationed in the south prepared to go home next week.

The six surface-to-air missiles were believed to be the biggest weapons system found by the U.S.-led international force that came to Somalia more than two months ago to protect relief shipments and stop clan fighting in the starving nation.

The United Nations is preparing to take over the operation, and Americans in the Kismayu region along the southern coast will pull out Tuesday and be replaced by Belgian troops, said Col. Fred Peck, a U.S. military spokesman.

Kismayu remains tense after U.S. and Belgian forces halted a bitter and bloody struggle for power between two militia leaders.

The turnover will be a key test of whether other nations will be able to maintain order after most of the 18,000 remaining U.S. troops leave.

In Mogadishu on Friday, Robert B. Oakley, U.S. special envoy to Somalia, dismissed critics who say the United States will be turning its back on Somalia at a critical juncture in the impoverished nation’s reconstruction.

And he praised the international mission for “making clear that political power no longer comes from the barrel of a gun.”

Rival militias and marauding bandits terrorized Somalia all last year, looting tons of relief food in a country where 350,000 people died from the combined effects of war and famine.

With the fighting quelled, the tools of war became toys for children who swarmed all over a missile site in Mogadishu.

The Soviet-built SA-2 missiles, which children first showed to U.S. troops Thursday, were heavily damaged and cannibalized for parts, said Capt. Dave Rababy of Marine intelligence.

But four of the warheads were still believed active, Rababy said.

“It’s probably the biggest weapons system we’ve found,” he said.

Rababy said there was no danger that militias could have used the missiles, which belonged to the army of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre before he was driven into exile in January, 1991, and Somalia descended into anarchy.

“There’s no way without a massive amount of maintenance that they’d be operable,” said Rababy, 32, of Flint, Mich. “We’re more worried about the children playing with them and setting them off.”

A charred booster rocket sat on one platform, the second stage and warhead on the ground. Children said they ignited the fuel inside the booster while playing with matches, but that no one was injured.

Around the base of another missile lay the graves of five adults and two children who, villagers said, were killed when someone set off the booster rocket.

“We were afraid somebody would get hurt, so we told the Marines,” said Abdullahi Hussein Hassan, 15, who helped lead the Marines to the site. About 100 children flocked around troops and reporters inspecting the area Friday.

“Kids are our best ally to find weapons,” Rababy said.

Somalia is awash with arms from past superpower-fed conflicts and clan warfare. Allied forces this week began airdropping leaflets telling people not to handle weapons they find and to notify authorities.