- ROME (Reuters) - Italian
customs officers seized more than 8,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles and
other weapons on a ship headed to the United States, officials said Tuesday.
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- The arms, worth about $7.15 million, were discovered
aboard a ship arriving from Romania that pulled into the southern Italian
port of Gioia Tauro on its way to the United States, Italy's customs said
in a statement.
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- According to the travel documents, the arms belong to
a large U.S. company with headquarters in the state of Georgia.
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- "We know that the destination was North America,
but we don't effectively know if that's where the arms were going,"
a customs official told RAI state television.
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- The arms were found inside three containers during a
routine customs check earlier this week. They were confiscated due to discrepancies
in the customs forms, but the news was only made public Tuesday.
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- The customs office said the weapons had been described
as "common guns" instead of assault rifles and longer-range combat
arms in the travel documentation. ($1=.8390 Euro)
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