Weapons stolen from UAE facility in Somalia, sold on open market

Mogadishu: At least 600 weapons were stolen in the past week from a former United Arab Emirates-run training center in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu and are for sale in the city, weapons dealers said yesterday.

The weapons, including new Kalashnikov assault rifles and Chinese versions of them, were stolen by Somali National Army soldiers who had been trained by the UAE at its facility, three Somali men who purchased weapons from the soldiers told Reuters.

The Gulf nation has trained hundreds of Somali troops since 2014 as part of an effort boosted by an African Union military mission to defeat an Islamist insurgency and secure the country for the Somali government, which is backed by Western nations, Turkey and the United Nations.

The UAE ended the programme on April 15, shortly after security forces at Mogadishu’s airport seized millions of dollars and temporarily held a UAE plane.

On Sunday night a ship docked at Mogadishu’s port was loaded with equipment from the UAE’s training center, including several dozen shipping containers of weapons, dozens of armored vehicles fixed with anti-aircraft guns and hundreds of cars, a port staff member told Reuters.

On Monday, gunfire broke out at the former training center where some of the troops were still camped out, and UAE-trained troops who were still there fled with as many weapons as they could, before a rival group took over the facility.

UAE officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The dealers showed Reuters five weapons they said they bought from the soldiers. They all bore the marking “SO XDS”, indicating that they belonged to the Somali army.

An arms expert said this was consistent with the previous arrangement between the two countries.

“The weapons belonged to the SNA, which distributed them to the UAE training center. So they are marked SO XDS,” he said.

“About 600 to 700 AK-47 and (other) guns were looted from the former UAE training camps,” weapons dealer Jama Ali told Reuters, speaking from a home in Mogadishu where he and two other men presented the weapons.

Ali said they purchased the weapons for $700, a significant discount on the current price of $1,350 in Mogadishu for a new Kalashnikov. The dealers then began last night reselling the weapons at $1,000 each, he said.