Security Services Foil Attempts To Smuggle 10 Types Of War Weapons Into Algeria

The latest report of the National Defense Ministry for the year 2018 revealed that the army units and detachments foiled 30 attempts to smuggle 10 types of war weapons to Algeria from neighboring countries.

“The type of these weapons reveal the identity of the groups that are engaged in smuggling because they are military equipment that has no relation to the activity of criminal gangs”, it added.

National Defense Ministry’s annual report, which was prepared, according to Echorouk sources, based on the daily arrests by the army detachments are composed of selected groups of soldiers from different units, and sometimes they include infantry and gendarmerie units, and other back up forces, shows that there is an increasing number of attempts to introduce weapons across the Algerian border and that were smuggled from neighboring countries such as Niger, Mali and Libya, and the details of arms seizures in the south and southeast of Algeria and exactly in the cities of Tamanrasset, Adrar and Illizi, accurately reveal the quantity and quality of weapons that were seized in each military operation .

In the details, the annual report included 10 different types of weapons, including medium and light weapons, in addition to ammunition that smugglers and mafia tried to smuggle to Algeria, and was thwarted by the armed forces in 30 operations, and it comes to Russian light-type Kalashnikovs, heavy MPK rifles, war rifles, light pistols, Hawn mortar shells, Katyusha rockets, RPG-7 missiles, anti-personnel mines and tanks, and TNT explosives.

In the 2018 annual turnover of the National Defense Ministry, the armed forces of different units seized 707 weapons, including 231 Kalashnikovs, 388 rifles, 25 pistols, 48 machine guns, 15 rocket launchers, 399 ammunition stores, 52 ammunition bars, 94764 rounds of various caliber, 42 hand grenades, 143 propellant charges, 160 detonators, 457 explosives’ capsules, and 498 shells.

These operations confirm the constant vigilance of the armed forces on the southern and south-eastern borders, on the other hand, the quality of weapons that were seized in military operations confirm a very important element of the identity of the groups that are active in arm trafficking, war equipment and weapons that are unrelated to the activity of criminal gangs and individual weapons as well, and the most dangerous of the seized weapons are the Katyusha rockets, of which few were kept in secret caches in the desert, and despite that they are relatively few, but they are highly lethal because of their long range.