BELFAST, Northern Ireland, Sept. 26 (UPI) -- The chief of an international decommissioning group said Monday the Irish Republican Army has apparently surrendered all of its weaponry.
Gen. John de Chastelain of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning said "very large quantities of arms, which we believe include all the arms in the IRA's possession," had been received and put out of service.
He said the commission had been given estimates in 2004 by the British and Irish security forces on what the IRA arsenal was believed to be, and that an inventory of what was returned was "consistent with these estimates," the Daily Mail reported.
He said it included ammunition, rifles, machine guns, mortars, missiles, handguns, explosives, flame throwers and surface-to-air missiles.
The counting of weapons was witnessed by clerics from the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches.
De Chastelain said it now remained for the commission to address the issue of disarming loyalist forces, the newspaper said.
