Bosnia has donated over 550 tons of surplus arms and ammunition to Iraq to help the fight against Daesh, the Balkan country’s defense minister says.
Zekerijah Osmic said Monday that the donation was made upon a request from Washington as part of Sarajevo's involvement in the US-led military coalition’s so-called battle against Daesh.
Osmic added that the supplies comprise of arms and ammunition produced decades ago, when Bosnia belonged to the then Yugoslav Federation.
The donation is part of some 16,000 tons of arms and ammunition left over from the 1992-95 inter-ethnic war between Bosnian Serbs backed by the Serbian army, Muslim Bosniaks and ethnic Croats. Bosnian authorities plan to either donate the surplus arms to other nations by 2020 or destroy them.
According to the defense minister, the surplus arms, held in warehouses usually near human settlements, are becoming increasingly rusty and may pose a security risk for residents.
The announcement comes just over a week after Hungary said it plans to dispatch soldiers to Iraq to join the US-led coalition. Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto said on March 10 that the country’s parliament could decide on the issue in mid-April and troops could arrive to Iraq in the second half of May.
Daesh started its campaign of terror in Iraq in the early June of 2014. The heavily armed terrorists took control of the strategic city of Mosul, located some 400 kilometers (248 miles) north of the capital, Baghdad, before sweeping through parts of the country’s Sunni heartland.
Editor's note: This article has been edited from the source material
