Israeli Navy Detains Ship Carrying Arms Cache
Israel’s Navy detained a ship carrying a large cache of arms.
Soldiers on Tuesday night boarded the freighter ship, flying the flag of Antigua, and discovered the arms and ammunition, disguised as commercial freight, according to the IDF spokespersons office. The ship, named the Francop, was stopped by a special Navy force about 100 miles off the western coast of Israel.
The ship was then taken to Israel’s Ashdod port for further scanning and unloading.
The ship was en route from Iran to Syria, according to reports. It carried more than 60 tons of weapons. including Katyusha rockets, assault rifles, grenades, and mortar shells, as well as an advanced anti-aircraft platform that has so far not been found in the region, Israel Radio reported,
“The seizure of the ship was carried out as part of the Navy’s ongoing intensive fight against terrorism and the prevention of weapons smuggling,” according to a statement from the IDF.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO