WASHINGTON, 25 December 2021, (TON): The US Navy said “it seized a large cache of assault rifles and ammunition being smuggled by a fishing ship from Iran likely bound for war-ravaged Yemen.”

US Navy patrol ships discovered the weapons aboard what the Navy described as a stateless fishing vessel in an operation that began in the northern reaches of the Arabian Sea off Oman and Pakistan. Sailors boarded the vessel and found 1,400 Kalashnikov-style rifles and 226,600 rounds of ammunition, as well as five Yemeni crew members.

It’s just the latest interdiction amid the grinding war in Yemen that pits Iran-backed Houthi rebels against a Saudi-led military coalition.

Western nations and UN experts repeatedly have accused Iran of smuggling illicit weapons and technology into Yemen over the years, fueling the civil war and enabling the Houthis to fire missiles and drones into Saudi Arabia.

Iran denies arming the Houthis despite evidence to the contrary.

In an unusually pointed move, the statement late on Wednesday from the US Navy’s Bahrain-based 5th Fleet blamed Iran for sending the weapons, alleging the boat was sailing along a route used to traffic weapons unlawfully to the Houthis in Yemen.