DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: Dubai police announced Thursday the Gulf emirate has seized thousands of small arms smuggled in a sea cargo shipment to Yemen.
The authorities said the guns were headed to Yemen Saada troubled region, where Shiite rebels fought government forces for years. Dubai government has described the discovery as the most important cargo of weapons of this type discovered in the region.
Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim, Chief of Dubai Police, said authorities found the 16,000 Turkish guns in a shipping container freight red, hidden behind boxes of furniture wrapped in plastic. The weapons were discovered in a warehouse in Dubai two weeks ago, he said.
Police showed pictures and a video of thousands of metallic black, silver and gold colored handguns arranged on a concrete parking lot.
The shipment originated in Turkey and Egypt through a port before arriving in Dubai port of Jebel Ali, police said. The smugglers were designed to carry weapons by another country in the Gulf, instead of Dubai but changed their plans to provide more convenient waterway, police said.
Tamim has refused to name the other Gulf countries to serve as a point of transportation, but said he was not Saudi Arabia. He said a number of suspects were arrested with the help of the countries concerned.
Jebel Ali is by far the busiest port in the Middle East. It docks and others serve as major transshipment hubs Dubai for cargo moving between Asia, Europe, Africa and the rest of the Middle East.
Yemen has been involved in a month of events aimed at the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who ruled for 32 years. A government crackdown against the opposition has killed dozens.
It is not known who ordered the shipment. Tamim said it was unlikely that the weapons were destined for the Yemeni government because they were counterfeit imitations of legitimate brands.
It implies that they may have been linked to the rebels Hawthi, a group of Shiite tribal members who led a fight within and outside the government-cons for the last six years.
But they could also have been controlled by middlemen who planned to sell one by one, he said, noting that the disturbances so that the arms merchants have many customers.
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