Israel said on Wednesday that commandos had intercepted a ship carrying “hundreds of tonnes” of arms from Iran to Hezbollah in a raid dozens of kilometers off its coast, but both Iran and Syria denied the cargo was headed to the Lebanese militia.
“We found dozens of containers, with hundreds of tonnes of arms bound for Hezbollah from Iran,” Israeli deputy naval commander Rani Ben Yehuda told reporters.
The shipment was among the largest ever seized by Israel, dwarfing the 50 tonnes of weapons found aboard the Karine A seized in 2002 on its way to Gaza, which dealt a major blow to relations between the Palestinians and Washington.
At the Mediterranean port of Ashdod, soldiers pulled hundreds of olive-green ammunition crates from shipping containers, many of them concealed by sacks of cement.
They were then divided into huge stacks of rockets of various sizes, mortar rounds, hand grenades and ammunition for AK-47 rifles. Many of the weapons crates had inscriptions in Spanish, Chinese and English.
The military had earlier said it had seized the 137m Antigua-flagged vessel Francop before dawn around 100 nautical miles (185km) off the Israeli coast.
Ben Yehuda said the captain of the ship was unaware of the contents of his cargo and had agreed to allow Israeli forces to board and inspect his ship.
He said the cargo manifest for the seized crates indicated they were headed from Iran to Syria, but Israel offered no direct proof to implicate Iran or Hezbollah. The Lebanese group declined to comment on the incident.
Iran and Syria rejected Israel’s accusations about the ship’s destination and direction of passage.
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