Gulf donated armoured vehicles 'missing' in Iraq

The former Iraqi Vice President Ayad Allawi has revealed that tens of armoured vehicles donated to Iraq by a Gulf country to assist in the battled against the Islamic State group (IS) have gone missing.

During a television interview, Allawi said that he had personally asked an Arab Gulf country to provide weapons to Iraq to fight the IS group "and this country provided Iraq with 76 armoured vehicles that were sent to Baghdad by air, however they disappeared upon arrival".

Allawi also said that the Iraqi Minister of Defense Khaled al-Obaidi informed him that he has not received the Gulf shipment.

The donor country has requested a clarification regarding the whereabouts of the arms shipments, however government departments have denied any knowledge according to Allawi.

The former Vice President whose post was scrapped as part of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's reform measures said that he had been tasked to visit a number of Arab countries regarding important issues that will be announced soon.

The National Coalition parliamentary bloc headed by Allawi had announced that a Gulf country has agreed to provide Iraq with free weapons.

Abdul Karim Abtan, a member of the National Coalition said Allawi's regional visits and discussions on the fight against IS and other Iraqi issues were fruitful and resulted in a Gulf country promising to provide Iraq with free weapons.

Iraqi military sources in Baghdad believe militias operating within the Popular Mobilisation Forces seized the armoured vehicles, especially since previous after weapons shipments from Asian and Western countries were similarly seized by militias.

"The Iraqi government is under pressure by the Americans to force the militias to return the seized weapons, as they were not intended for the militias in the first place, however the militias deny possession of the weapon," said an Iraqi military official.

"We also cannot search the militias' arms depots because that might result in a confrontation between government forces and the Iranian backed militias,' added the official.

According to the analyst Adel Abdul Ilah, such incidents of weapons seizures leads Iraqi forces to be weaker against IS in some areas and internationally embarrasses the Iraqi government.

"The army and federal police forces have been able to liberate a number of important areas in Saladin and Anbar, but they soon lost those areas because they lack heavy weaponry, which is all in the hands of the Popular Mobilisation Forces," said Abdul Ilah.