WASHINGTON: Saudi Arabia has been supplying Syrian rebels battling the regime of President Bashar Al Assad with arms bought from Croatia, according to The New York Times.
Citing unnamed US and Western officials, the newspaper reported late on Monday that the Saudi-financed “large purchase of infantry weapons” was part of an “undeclared surplus” of arms left over from the Balkan wars in the 1990s and that they began reaching anti-regime fighters via Jordan in December. That was when many Yugoslav weapons started showing up in YouTube videos posted by rebels, it said. Since then, The Times added, officials said “multiple planeloads” of weapons have left Croatia, with one quoted as saying the shipments included “thousands of rifles and hundreds of machine guns,” as well as an “unknown quantity of ammunition.”
A spokeswoman for the Croatian Foreign Ministry told The Times that, since the start of the Arab Spring, the Balkan country had not sold any weapons to either Saudi Arabia or the Syrian rebels. Saudi and Jordanian officials meanwhile declined to comment, the newspaper added. AFP
