Image by Abode of Chaos via FlickrLibyan officials are claiming to have intercepted two boats carrying a cache of weapons from Qatar, reportedly intended for rebels fighting forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi.
On Monday, Moussa Ibrahim, a government spokesman, said 11 rebels were captured from the boats close to shore near the town of Janzour, just west of Tripoli.
"In the early hours of this morning around 4 o'clock our security forces intercepted the submission of many weapons from a ship that raises the Tunisian flag to two small Libyan boats with some Libyan rebels on board the boats," he said.
"I was told that this was the load of one major container, so this would be something like one out of ten or something like that," Ibrahim added.
Foreign reporters were later taken to Tripoli's port where they were shown a cache of rifles and ammunition displayed in a tent, but not the captured boats.
The weapons included about 100 Belgian-made FN assault rifles, as well as thousands of rounds of ammunition of the same calibre used in the guns.
Several of the ammunition boxes were marked in English as coming from the armed forces of Qatar.
Qatar has emerged as one of the main supporters of the rebels. And its involvement in the country's civil war has enraged Libyan officials.
Mahmoud Jibril, of Libya's Transitional National Council, said on Thursday that foreign deliveries of military hardware would give the rebels a chance to win the battle against Gaddafi quickly and with the least amount of blood spilt.
