A multimillion dollar cache of weapons bound for Somalia was intercepted by an Australian naval ship near the coast of Oman on Monday (March 7).
The weapons supply, which included almost 2,000 AK-47 rifles, 100 rocket-propelled grenades launchers and 49 PKM machine guns, violates a UN Security Council arms embargo against Somalia.
“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.
The East African nation has been mired in conflict and civil war since 1991. The arms embargo, first imposed in 1992, was eased in 2013 to allow the Western-backed government in Mogadishu to buy light weapons to bolster its armed forces.
The embargo is intended to keep weapons out of the hands of militant groups such as the Islamist al-Shabab insurgents, who are aligned with al-Qaeda.
The Australian Navy patrols much of the Indian Ocean as part of an international seafaring force. The navy said sailors from HMAS Darwin boarded a fishing vessel 170 nautical miles off the coast of Oman to verify the flag the ship was sailing under. They determined the vessel was stateless.
The Darwin is patrolling the region as part of the Combined Task Force 150, which is responsible for counter-terrorism operations, curbing piracy and drug smuggling.
Also seized from the fishing vessel were 39 PKM spare barrels and 20 mortar tubes. One Western security expert estimated the street value of the entire cache to be in excess of $2 million (£1.4 million).
It was not immediately clear who, in Somalia, was the intended recipient of the weapons cache, which was found hidden under fishing nets. Besides al-Shabaab, there are regional states in Somalia that operate and equip their own militias without the approval of the central government.
