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US Navy seizes 2,100 rifles from ship ‘bound for Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen’

10 January 2023 17:59 (UTC +04:00)

The US Navy has seized more than 2,100 assault rifles from a ship in the Gulf of Oman which are believed to have come from Iran and been heading to Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, APA reports citing Reuters.

It was the latest capture of weapons allegedly heading to the Arab world’s poorest country.

The seizure last Friday happened after a team from the USS Chinook, a coastal patrol boat, boarded a traditional wooden sailing vessel known as a dhow.

They discovered the Kalashnikov-style rifles individually wrapped in green tarpaulin aboard the ship, said Timothy Hawkins, a spokesman for the Navy’s Middle East-based 5th Fleet.

The Chinook, along with the patrol boat USS Monsoon and the guided missile destroyer USS The Sullivans, took possession of the weapons. They resembled other assault rifles previously seized by the Navy, suspected to be from Iran and heading to Yemen.

“When we intercepted the vessel, it was on a route historically used to traffic illicit cargo to the Houthis in Yemen,” Mr Hawkins told The Associated Press. “The Yemeni crew corroborated the origin.”