US Navy seizes illicit weapons cache in Arabian Sea

The US Navy on Sunday said that it had seized a huge cache of illicit Russian and Chinese weapons from a stateless vessel sailing in international waters of the North Arabian Sea. The seizure was made by the US Navy's Fifth Fleet which is based in Bahrain. The US Navy's guided-missile cruiser USS Monterey intercepted the boat and discovered the cargo during a routine boarding in a two-day operation on May 6-7.

 

The US Navy said in a statement that the cache of weapons



included dozens of advanced Russian-made anti-tank guided missiles, thousands of Chinese Type 56 assault rifles, and hundreds of PKM machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades launchers.

 

It added that the intended destination of the vessel and the ammunitions is under investigation. The statement added the alleged vessel was assessed for seaworthiness and its crew was provided food and water before being released after questioning.