An Australian Navy ship has seized a huge cache of weapons near Oman’s coast from a fishing vessel bound for Somalia, the navy said on Monday, exposing a possible violation of a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) arms embargo against Somalia.
The UN has a decade-long arms embargo in place against the terrorism riddled country, which has experienced conflict since a civil war broke out in 1991.
The Australian navy, which patrols waters around the Indian Ocean as part of an international maritime force, said it had seized nearly 2,000 AK-47 rifles, 100 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, 49 PKM machine guns, 39 PKM spare barrels and 20 mortar tubes from the fishing vessel.
“The weapons were seized under United Nations sanctions, which authorise interdiction on the high seas of illicit weapons destined for Somalia,” the navy said in a statement.
In 2013, the UNSC eased some of the embargo restrictions, allowing the Western-backed government in Mogadishu to buy light weapons to bolster its armed forces battle against al-Shabaab insurgents.
The Australian Navy did not indicate who was the intended recipient of the weapons, which were found hidden under fishing nets. As well as al Shabaab, some regional states in Somalia operate and equip their own militias without the approval of the central government.
