Israelis seize weapons headed for Hezbollah

JERUSALEM | Israeli commandos seized a ship Wednesday that defense officials said was carrying hundreds of tons of weapons from Iran bound for Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrillas - the largest arms shipment Israel has ever commandeered.

The Israeli military said an Iranian document was found on board, showing that the arms shipment originated from Iran, although the paper was not shown to reporters. Rear Adm. Roni Ben-Yehuda, the deputy Israeli navy commander, said that despite its size, the shipment of weapons was “a drop in the ocean” of arms being shipped to Hezbollah.

“It’s a cargo certificate that shows that it was from a port in Iran,” military spokeswoman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich said. “All the cargo certificates are stamped at the ports of origin, and this one was stamped at an Iranian port.”

The Israelis boarded the ship before dawn in the waters near Cyprus. Israel has long accused Iran of arming its enemies.

Adm. Ben-Yehuda said at a briefing that “hundreds of tons” of weapons were found on the ship, giving a much higher estimate than an earlier one of more than 60 tons.

Containers had Iranian shipping codes in English - “IRISL” on one side and “I.R. Iranian Shipping Lines Group” on the other. Some of the hundreds of crates lined up on the dock were open, revealing dark green missiles with English-language designations painted in black.

Israeli military officials said the ship’s journey started in Iran, and it arrived a week ago in Beirut. The next stop was Damietta, Egypt, where the weapons were loaded, they said. Adm. Ben-Yehuda said the ship was headed for Latakia, Syria.

In Tehran, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem dismissed Israeli assertions that the ship carried arms. “This ship was carrying goods from Syria heading to Iran and was not carrying weapons-making materials,” the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency quoted him as saying during a visit Wednesday.

It was not clear why Mr. al-Moallem said the ship was headed in the opposite direction of that stated by Israel.

Iran and Syria are close allies and Hezbollah’s principle backers. Israel accuses Syria and Iran of supplying Hezbollah with weapons using air, sea and land routes - including through the port of Latakia.

In the southern Israeli port city of Ashdod, where the ship was towed and docked, hundreds of rockets and piles of boxes of grenades were stacked on the shore as Israeli forces unloaded the cargo, a process that was expected to take hours.

Israel and Hezbollah fought a bitter war in the summer of 2006 that ended with a U.N.-brokered cease-fire, but occasional flare-ups occur.

Wednesday’s seizure was bigger than a similar haul in 2002, when Israeli military confiscated a vessel with 50 tons of missiles, mortars, rifles and ammunition headed for Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.