Israel seizes weapons-smuggling ship off coast

Tel Aviv, Nov 5

Israeli naval commandoes Wednesday seized a cargo ship smuggling weapons from Iran to the Hezbollah guerrilla group in Lebanon, the military said.

The Antigua-flagged, German-owned Francop was stopped some 160 km off the Israeli coast before dawn, military spokeswoman Lieutenant-Colonel Avital Leibowitz told DPA.

After the ship was redirected to the southern Israeli port of Ashdod, 36 large shipping containers containing the arms were laid out on the dock.

Television footage broadcast on Israel's Channel 10 Wednesday evening showed hundreds of boxes with rockets, including 122-mm Russian-style Katyushas, as well as anti-tank and artillery shells, hand grenades and ammunition for semi-automatic weapons, worth an estimated tens of millions of dollars.

Commodore Rani Ben-Yehuda, the head of the Israeli Naval Staff, told reporters the amount was enough to sustain Hezbollah through one month of fighting with Israel.

He said it was more than ten times as much as was found on the Karine A, a Palestinian freighter intercepted by Israeli commandos in the Red Sea in 2002, with 50 tons of weapons earmarked for Gaza.

As many as 3,000 rockets and shells were found on the Francop, Israeli officials estimated, noting that Hezbollah, during the entire 33-day Lebanon war in 2006, fired some 4,000 projectiles at Israel.

Last updated on Nov 5^th, 2009 at 02:59 am IST--DPA

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