The weapons were seized by units attached to the Guards' elite Quds Force, which travelled to Libya from their base in southern Sudan.
Acting on orders received from Revolutionary Guards commanders inIran, they took advantage of the chaos that engulfed Libya following the collapse of the regime of former dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to seize "significant quantities" of advanced weaponry, according to military intelligence officers in Libya.
They say the weapons stolen by Iran include sophisticated Russian-made SA-24 missiles that were sold to Libya in 2004. The missile can shoot down aircraft flying at 11,000 feet, and is regarded as the Russian equivalent of the American "stinger" missiles that were used by the US-backed mujahideen to defeat Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It is similar to the weapon used by al-Qaeda in the failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet taking off from Kenya's Mombasa airport in 2002.
Intelligence officials believe the missiles and other weapons seized from Gaddafi's abandoned arsenals were smuggled across the Libyan border to southern Sudan earlier this month where they are now believed to be held at a secret storage facility run by the Revolutionary Guards at al-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur. Some of the missiles are also reported to have been smuggled into Egypt.
The governments of Iran and Sudan recently signed a defence cooperation pact, and hundreds of Revolutionary Guards are based in Sudan where they help to train the Sudanese military and help to support the Sudanese government's campaign against rebel groups. The Guards also have a number of training camps that are used to train Islamist terror groups.
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