Yemen denies arms smuggling reports

Yemen’s Interior Ministry has denied reports surrounding a ship allegedly caught smuggling arms off the country’s western coast, hours after the Ministry published the news on its own website. Security Media Centre, a news website affiliated with the Ministry, reported coast guards had stormed a foreign ship known as Jihan Two, smuggling weapons into Yemen close to Bab el Mandeb. However, the Ministry later pulled the story, apologizing for an “unintentional error.” “The error came down to a misunderstanding over some of the information,” Brigadier Mohammed Kaedy, a Ministry official, said on Friday. Users on social networking sites have reacted sarcastically to the news. One Twitter used claimed the Ministry “doesn't know about anything going on in this country.” Another said: “They are not worthy of the confidence of the Yemeni people.” Yemen reported it had captured an Iranian ship, Jihan One, in January, which was allegedly carrying a huge weapons cache en route to Southern Movement activists in Yemen’s fractured south.