Francop weapons seizure – What is in the boxes?

[JJackson]

Following the links in the news round-up, and elsewhere, it is obvious the Israel have found a sizeable load of weapons (54 tons in one report). Aljazeera are running news footage of some of the cache which is detailed enough to show exactly what much of it is as the stamps on the side of the boxes – down to the lot numbers – are visible and it is all in English. I do not have a military background but I am sure there are many here who could say what these weapons are, where they were manufactured and, given the lot numbers, who the manufactures supplied them to. Also I lack the legal knowledge to understand if Israel has any right to attack ships in international waters and force them into their ports and is so would it be OK for Syria to intercept a US shipment of weapons to Israel, as long as it was done in international waters? The reports say the shipment was bound for Syria and Israel is saying that it was destined for Hezbollah and claiming it originally came from Iran but I could not find any evidence for either of these claims apart from their being some Iranian containers onboard. It seems unlikely that Iran would covertly run embargoed arms in Iranian labelled containers when plain boxes are freely available.

Can anyone throw any light on any of this? Thanks.

P.S checkout the Timesonline link, which I was shocked by. I expected something a little more balanced from a UK non-tabloid; this article reads like it was lifted from an Israeli tabloid. “Hamas, another Iranian proxy” etc most of the rest being inflammatory unsubstantiated claims by various Israeli officials.

Edit
This link is to the Aljazeera online story which has some photos - but nothing like as clear as the video report. The rest of the story just muddies the picture further. Hezbollah say the weapons were not theirs, Syria says the ship was coming from - not going to - them, Israel says they have a document proving the weapons came from Iran but haven't produced it, they also say the ships master said it came from Egypt and an Israeli Rear Admiral says their are hundreds of tons of weapons.

It also seems that although there were Iranian shipping containers on board these were not the ones with weapons in them.