Turkey has prevented the European Union’s naval mission enforcing the Libya arms embargo from checking a suspect freighter off the war-torn country’s coast, Germany’s Der Spiegel reports.
According to the report, German frigate Hamburg working under Operation Irini tried to check a Turkish cargo vessel suspected of smuggling weapons, about 200 kilometers off the Libyan coast on Sunday.
The operation was halted following a protest by the government in Ankara, the report says, adding that the German soldiers disembarked the Rosaline A vessel on Monday.
A Turkish warship prevented an EU embargo check on a cargo vessel sailing near Libya in June.
Operation Irini, a European Union military operation under the umbrella of the Common Security and Defense Policy, was launched on March 31, 2020 with the aim to enforce the United Nations arms embargo to Libya. .