By JPOST.COM STAFFfrancop shayetet 13 video 248.88(photo credit: IDF)
The IDF on Friday published new video clips documenting the moments when Navy commandos from the elite Flottila 13 unit raided the Francop cargo vessel, opened containers on board the ship and discovered a huge stash of armaments sent by Iran and bound for Syria, possibly intended for use by Hizbullah.
In the first moments of the operation, when the commandos did not know whether the crew would cooperate with the inspection of its cargo, they searched the vessel with weapons loaded and with bullets lodged in the barrel carrier.
The final weight of the cache was 320 tons and included 9,000 mortar shells, thousands of 107-mm. Katyusha rockets that have a range of 15 kilometers, some 600 Russian-made 122-mm. rockets with a 40-km. range and hundreds of thousands of Kalashnikov bullets.
IDF sources said they were surprised by the significant quantity of mortar shells. "This is the most we have seen in a single shipment," one senior officer involved in reviewing the arms cache said Thursday.
Most of the weaponry, a senior military officer said, appeared to have come from the Far East and Russia, while some of it was made in Iran. Most of it appeared to have been manufactured in the past few years, the officer added.
In one of the photos released by the IDF, several 107-mm. Katyusha rockets are seen on launchers in the yard of a home in southern Lebanon, the identical location from where a rocket was fired into the Galilee last week.
The ship was captured on Wednesday off the shores of Cyprus. The crew has been released after the military determined that they were not aware of the contents of the cargo.
