Italian dock claims to block arms shipment to Israel

The Italian Adriatic port of Ravenna refused entry to two trucks said to be carrying arms to Israel today, the city’s mayor Alessandro Barattoni tells reporters.

Barattoni says the port authority had accepted the request from him and the regional government to deny access to trucks carrying explosives en route to the Israeli port of Haifa.

“The Italian state says it has blocked the sale of arms to Israel but it is unacceptable that, thanks to bureaucratic loopholes, they can pass through Italy from other countries,” Barattoni says in a statement.

He did not provide details on where the containers had come from or provide evidence of their contents.

Similar action to block arms shipments to Israel has been taken by dockworkers in other European countries such as France, Sweden and Greece.

A spokesperson from the Israeli embassy declines to comment.

On Friday, Italy’s largest trade union body, the CGIL, will hold a national half-day strike and marches in Rome and other cities, while on September 22, two other unions will halt work and try to block activity in the large ports of Genoa and Livorno.

“We won’t let a single pin through the port,” says Riccardo Rudino from the Calp dockers’ union in Genoa.

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