Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrilla group has denied any connection with a shipment of weapons intercepted by the Israeli navy. Skip related content
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Hezbollah denies Israeli arms claims
Israeli officials said naval commandos had seized a ship carrying hundreds of tonnes of Iranian-supplied arms, including rockets, to the Shia Muslim group.
The group said in a statement: "Hezbollah denies any link to the weapons that the Zionist enemy claims it removed from the vessel Francop. At the same time it condemns Israeli piracy in international waters."
Israeli Commodore Ran Ben-Yehuda, speaking on Wednesday as the search of the Antigua-flagged Francop was under way in Israel's Mediterranean port of Ashdod, said the weapons were found behind civilian goods in at least 40 shipping containers.
He said the shipment was enough to keep Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which fired some 4,000 rockets into Israel during a 34-day war in 2006, supplied for a month of fighting.
He said the crates of bullets, rocket-propelled grenades and rockets were picked up by the Francop in the Egyptian port of Damietta and were to have reached Hezbollah via Syria. Syria and Iran have also denied the Israeli allegations.
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