Israeli Border Police officers discovered a weapons cache in the Bedouin village of Lakiya near Beersheba in Southern Israel, the Israel Border Police spokesperson announced on Monday.
Border Police and local authorities led a joint initiative to search a residential complex in Lakiya and found hundreds of firearm parts and accessories, as well as fully-built guns.
Among the findings were 103 weapon magazines, 80 gun bodies, 69 handles, 58 gun stocks, and more. Officers also found sixteen fully-built weapons, ten of which were operational.
Violence and crime in the Bedouin sector in the Negev are an issue that's plagued Israeli authorities for years now, with the government recently taking a series of measures to curb it and create dialogue with the community.
"We are dealing in an orderly manner with problems that we have already become accustomed to having nothing to do with, that are chronic problems that are used to being pushed off," Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in November after nineteen people were arrested as two Bedouin crime families brawled in a Beersheba hospital.
The recent spike of terrorist incidents in populated civilian centers in Israel has heightened fears recently, as the criminal elements that have been predominantly confined to their local areas are inherently contributing to arming potential terrorists who could attack Israelis.
The owner of the complex was arrested and the police investigation is ongoing.
Sarah Ben-Nun contributed to this report.