Israel Intercepts Ship Smuggling Lethal Rockets Into Gaza From Iran
Israel intercepted a ship Wednesday morning bound for the Gaza Strip, carrying a payload of deadly Syrian-made rockets that Israeli Defense Force authorities say would have ended up in the hands of terrorist groups based in the territory.
Israeli authorities said that the source of the rocket shipment was Iran.
The rockets were intended to reach Gaza via a known smuggling route from Port Sudan, through Egypt and then into tunnels dug for the purpose of illegally bringing lethal weapons into the self-governed Palestinian region along the Mediterranean coast.
Crew members on the intercepted ship, which sailed under a Panama flag with 17 crew from several different countries, may not have even known what they were carrying, an Israeli military source told The Jerusalem Post.
The long-range rockets carried by the ship are more powerful than most rockets already in the arsenal of militant groups in Gaza and would have put the most densely populated areas in Israel well within firing range. Shooting destructive rockets at targets in Israel has long been a tactic used by militant groups.
During the eight-day war in Gaza two years ago, more than 1,500 rockets blasted out if Gaza into Israel, some almost landing in Jerusalem an Tel Aviv.
The intercept was carried out by the elite Israel commando squad Flotilla 13 which boarded the ship in the Red Sea about 100 miles off the coast of Sudan, in international waters. There were no injuries in the raid and the crew, which was one day from its destination in Port Sudan, cooperated with the Israeli special forces.
Israeli Defense Force Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner called the ship intercept “a complex covert navy operation in the early hours of this morning” that netted the shipment of “advanced” weapons from Iran.
Israel officials said the ship intercept raid was the culmination of a months-long intelligence operation. According to intelligence officials in Israel, the missiles originated in Syria, and were then flown to Iran where they were shipped to Iraq and concealed in cement containers.
Last week, Israel reportedly carried out airstrikes against militant group weapons bases in Lebanon, but Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu was tight lipped about those operations. Netanyahu has been campaigning to persuade other world leaders that Iran poses a grave threat to Israel, so he was forthcoming about the ship intercept.
“Iran smiles and says all sorts of nice things, the same Iran is sending deadly weapons to terrorist organizations and is doing so via a ramified network of secret operations in order to send rockets, missiles and other deadly weapons that will be used to harm innocent citizens,” INetanyahu said in a prepared statement after the Israel ship intercept operation.
