Hargeysa, Somaliland, January 24, 2009 (SL Times) – An attempt to smuggle anti-aircraft weapons into Djibouti and possibly Ethiopia was foiled after the Somaliland security authorities discovered a cache of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles hidden in a house in Hargeysa on Wednesday.
In an interview with the BBC on Friday, Somaliland’s Interior minister Abdillahi Ismail Ali (Erro) confirmed the seizure of at least ten missile weapons.
The minister said the missiles were brought into the country from neighboring Somalia by land.
He accused Eritrea of supplying the portable air defense units to an Islamic militant group in Somalia.
“The weapons came from Eritrea to central Somalia and then transported to Somaliland by road” Mr. Erro said.
News about the find first appeared in Friday’s issue of the Somali language Haatuf, Somaliland Times’ sister newspaper.
Meanwhile the Somaliland Times has learned that at least two men, one a Somalilander and the other from Somalia, have so far been arrested by police in connection with the cache comprising the anti-aircraft missiles.
Reliable sources have confirmed to this newspaper that the missiles captured in Hargeysa were actually part of a consignment containing a total of 18 units.
According to these sources the remaining 8 missiles were still being kept somewhere in Somalia by a Somali terror group linked to Al-Qaida.
The missiles found in Somaliland were intended for use against western military and civilian aircrafts which use Djibouti airport, the sources said.
These sources have also cited Addis Ababa airport as a potential target.
The Somaliland security authorities were believed to have been alerted about the missiles in advance by the Ethiopian intelligence.
At least one western intelligence agency is said to have also taken part in the information exchange that led to the seizure of the missiles in Hargeysa.
It was only on October 29, 2008 when suicide bombers belonging to Somalia’s terrorist group Al-Shabab staged 3 attacks against targets in Hargeysa. The blasts killed over 24 Somalilanders while injuring more than 30 people.
The man-portable air defense system is a shoulder-launched surface to air missile which can pose a serious threat to commercial aviation. It can be bought for only a few thousand dollars on the black market.
Experts say that an estimated 20,000 of these type of missiles, most of them made in Russia, are for sale on worldwide black markets.
On November 2002, an Israeli charter plane carrying tourists was fired at by Al-Qaida operatives while taking off from Mombasa airport in Kenya.




 

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