Israel Matzav

North Korean weapons shipment to Hamas, Hezbullah caught in Thailand

The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that Thai authorities have impounded a weapons plane from North Korea that was bound for 'Pakistan or the Middle East.' YNet reported the story over the weekend, but did not report the origin of the plane or the weapons' destination. Israel Radio reported on Monday morning that the weapons were bound for Hamas and Hezbullah.

Thirty-five tons of North Korean weapons, including missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and explosives, have been seized from a Russian transporter plane that stopped to refuel in Bangkok during an apparent arms run to Asia.

The huge cache, uncovered by Thai authorities on a tip-off from the US, was allegedly being shipped illegally to ''a south Asian country'' to help North Korea beat United Nations sanctions on arms trading.

There was a suggestion yesterday from the Thai Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, that the arms may have been bound for terrorist organisations.

...

A Thai Government spokesman said the crates on board the plane held a huge array of functioning arms. ''There seem to be several types of weapons, components and materials: long tubes, shoulder-fired missiles, certain types of rocket-propelled grenades,'' Panitan Wattanayagorn said.

The full payload has been taken to an air force base in Nakhon Sawan province, central Thailand for inspection.

The plane remains under guard at the airport. The five men on board, four Kazakhs and a Belarussian, have been arrested but are reportedly saying little to investigators. Initially, they had said the 12 tightly sealed wood and metal crates on board held oil-drilling equipment.

Read the whole thing.

Together with the 500 tons of Iranian weapons captured by Israel in early November, and the ANL Australia arms ship from North Korea in July, this makes quite an impressive haul. Unfortunately, there are likely also weapons that are getting through.

The more this goes on, the more George Bush's conception of a world whether you are 'either with us or with the terrorists' seems correct and the more Barack Obama's hope and change seems like an illusion. North Korea, Iran and Syria - nations all named by Bush - are part of an axis of evil. And Lebanon is on the verge of joining them.

What could go wrong?

UPDATE 11:31 AM

Here's an al-Jazeera report on this story. Let's go to the videotape.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:48 AM