By SUE SURKES
Egypt ordered more than 30,000 rocket-propelled grenades from North Korea in a clandestine sanctions-busting deal last year that was foiled at the last minute by the US, the Washington Post reported on Monday.
The discovery, which led to what a United Nations report later described as the “largest seizure of ammunition in the history of sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” exposed one in a series of secret deals between the two countries that prompted US complaints to Egypt and the Trump administration’s decision over the summer to freeze or delay military aid to Cairo worth nearly $300 million.
The ship carrying the weapons to Egypt was spotted in the summer of 2016 by US intelligence, which tracked it as it left North Korea with a North Korean crew and watched it sail westward toward the Gulf of Aden and the Suez Canal.
The US alerted Egyptian authorities through diplomatic channels. The vessel, which was flying Cambodian colors, carried heavy tarpaulin covering unknown cargo.
Egyptian customs agents were waiting when the ship entered Egypt’s waters outside of the Suez Canal. They discovered the weapons hidden under rocks of iron ore: more than 24,000 rocket-propelled grenades, and completed components for 6,000 more.
All were North Korean copies of a rocket warhead known as the PG-7, a variant of a Soviet munition first built in the 1960s, the Post report said.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/egypt-secretly-ordered-more-than-30000-grenades-from-north-korea-report/
