Missiles, RPGs found stashed at Arab village school

Police raid uncovers weapons cache at kindergarten, school for special needs students; weapons likely intended for criminal use.

By BEN HARTMAN
Weapons found stashed at Arab school in Galilee 370 (photo credit: Israel Police)
Weapons found stashed at Arab school in Galilee 370
(photo credit: Israel Police)
Police found anti-tank missiles and rocket-propelled grenades stashed in a school and a kindergarten for special needs children in Abu Sinan, near Acre, during a raid on Tuesday morning.
Also on Tuesday, police announced that in a search at an elementary school in Taiba, east of Kfar Saba, officers found an assault rifle and a pistol stashed underneath the floorboard of a classroom. They also reported finding what appeared to be explosives.
Pictures put out by police from the Abu Sinan raid show three LAW (light anti-tank weapon) missiles and four RPGs, all of which were recently stolen from IDF depots. The arms were found in a drainage canal and a small pond on the ground of the school and kindergarten, along with raw explosives, grenades and hundreds of assault rifle bullets.
Cmdr. Michael Shifshak, head of the northern branch of the YAMAR investigative unit, told The Jerusalem Post that the weapons were somewhat out of the ordinary, but added that two weeks ago at a village not far away police seized more than 50 grenades and several AK-47 assault rifles.
The village is mixed Muslim, Druse and Christian. Shifshak said police did not know who the guns belonged to or who stole them, but that it was possible that a Druse villager serving in the IDF stole the arms from an army depot. The raid was conducted not long after the IDF reported the weapons stolen, and through cooperation with the army police were able to pinpoint where the arms would most likely have been taken to, he said.
He added that weapons were intended for criminal use and that while they may have been intended for use in clan feuds, they could have easily been sold across the country, with a single LAW missile retailing for around NIS 70,000 on the black market, and an assault rifle for around NIS 50,000.
Police “have placed a major emphasis on fighting the arms trade in the Arab sector, which poses a major threat to daily life,” Shifshak said.