Colombian President Gustavo Petro says millions of bullets, thousands of grenades, hundreds of rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and dozens of missiles have gone missing in two military bases in the country.

Mr Petro claimed the weapons were stolen and they were discovered missing during surprise visits to two military bases in Tolemaida and La Guajira, on 12 February and 1 April, respectively, the BBC reported.

Over 808,000 bullets and close to 10,000 grenades were found missing in the official base inventory records in Tolemaida, while close to 4.2 million bullets and more than 9,300 grenades could not be accounted for in La Guajira.

Mr Petro said two Spike missiles, 37 Nimrod missiles and 550 RPGs were also missing at the La Guajira base. 

He told reporters that the weapons might have possibly been sold to Colombian armed groups, smuggled to Haiti or sold on the international black market by corrupt military personnel, according to the BBC.

“The only way to explain this type of lacking [inventory] is that there have existed, for a long time, networks of people in the armed forces and civilians dedicated to mass commercialisation of arms, using legal arms from the Colombian state,” Mr Petro told a news conference on Tuesday.

“The saddest thing about this is that these same munitions end up wounding and killing the same members of the military forces,” the Colombian president said.

Meanwhile, the Colombian defence minister said investigations had been launched into the disappearance of the weapons from the bases.