Shafaq News- Baghdad
The high-level committee, established by the Iraqi Joint Operations Commandand tasked with investigating the smuggling of an arms shipment across Iraq'sborder with Syria, officially began its work Friday, a senior security sourcetold Shafaq News.
The inquiry extends beyond the border crossing's administration andcivil offices there to a wide range of security units and military checkpointsresponsible for securing the overland routes and areas the tanker passedthrough before reaching the border, the source said.
The committee is reviewing duty logs and inspection records forcheckpoints along that route. It is to submit its findings to theCommander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces within 48 hours for ratification.
On Friday, the Syrian authorities said they seized a shipment ofweapons, missiles, and drones that crossed from Iraq into Syria hidden insidean oil tanker declared as heavy fuel oil before Syrian authorities and said thecargo was bound for Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
A senior Iraqi security source told Shafaq News the tanker left Iraqiterritory by land about nine days earlier, its opening closed and fully sealedby customs, with instructions not to open it before reaching its finaldestination, ostensibly to avoid having the shipment rejected by the receivingstate.
The tanker crossed the border through the al-Tanf crossing, according tothe source, “exploiting the absence of specialized sonar equipment capable ofdetecting weapons or prohibited materials inside liquid tankers at thecrossing.” The weapons also evaded K9 police dogs because they had been wrappedin insulating bags and submerged in dense heavy fuel oil to make detection moredifficult.
The tanker cleared the Iraqi side but was found, upon inspection on theSyrian side, to be loaded with large quantities of weapons, missiles, anddrones concealed “professionally to disguise the cargo and evade monitoring,”according to the account.
The source described the operation as a "serious securitybreach" requiring an urgent investigation to determine the circumstancesof the incident, hold negligent parties accountable, and strengthen inspectionand monitoring at border crossings, given the risk to the country's securityand the reputation of its crossings.
Hezbollah dismissed the accusations that it maintains any activity inside Syrian territory, calling them fabricated accounts with no basis in fact. “The accusations are intended to damage Hezbollah and serve the Zionist-American project in the region,” the group's media relations office said, without referring to any specific incident.
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