Russia sending armored vehicles to WB

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has announced that Moscow will supply Palestinians with fifty Russian-made armored vehicles within days.

“We have sent the Palestinians 50 armored vehicles, they have arrived in Jordan, and we hope that they will arrive here in the next few days,” Lavrov told reporters in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday.

The Russian official’s remark came after meetings with acting Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Earlier in 2008, Israel allowed the Russian Defense Ministry to supply the vehicles in two shipments of 25 each, AFP reported.

However, the delivery has so far been delayed as Israel argued that the shipment could fall into the hands of the Palestinian Resistance Movement of Hamas.

Hamas, which won the 2006 parliamentary elections, was forced to limit its rule to the Gaza Strip in June 2007 after foiling an alleged coup plot against Ismail Haniyeh, the democratically Palestinian elected prime minister.