A Saudi cargo ship on a suspected mission to collect weapons for use in the war in Yemen arrived in the French port of Cherbourg on Thursday.

The Bahri Yanbu arrived at around 5 pm (1600 GMT) in Cherbourg, where dozens of activists held a protest over the sale of arms to Riyadh given its involvement in the brutal Yemeni conflict.

The activists held aloft placards with slogans such as "Stop illegal arms sales" and "War crimes in Yemen - 230,000 lives".

In a statement 19 NGOs and left-wing parties, including Amnesty International and Oxfam France, accused Saudi Arabia of "waging a merciless war on the people of Yemen" and "perpetrating unspeakable atrocities against a defenceless people".

"We cannot accept that the port of Cherbourg be used to serve this conflict, in the name of the interests of arms dealers and their clients," they said.

NGOs had succeeded in preventing the ship from docking in France last May, when it was set to receive a weapons shipment for Riyadh that sparked a similar outcry.

The nearly five-year war in Yemen has claimed tens of thousands of lives, most of them civilians, according to nongovernmental groups.

The UN has classified the conflict as the world's worst humanitarian crisis. Saudi Arabia intervened in its southern neighbour to support the government against Iran-backed Huthi rebels.

NGOs have called on France to identify what will be loaded onto the Bahri Yanbu, which they say has an exclusive contract with the Saudi defence ministry.

If the load is weapons, the NGOs demand "the guarantees France has that they will not be used illegally against Yemeni civilians."

There has been no official comment on the ship from the French government.

Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest purchasers of French military equipment.

Belgian region halts arms sales to Saudi defence ministry
Brussels (AFP) Feb 6, 2020 - The Belgian region of Wallonia, home to the FN Herstal and CMI arms plants, said Thursday it had halted weapons sales to Saudi Arabia's defence ministry because of the war in Yemen.

Confirming a report in the newspaper L'Echo, Wallonia said Minister-President Elio di Rupo had "the Yemen drama" in mind when refusing an export licence to the Saudi air force.

In a letter seen by AFP, it added "the minister-president refuses all licences for the Saudi defence ministry."

Saudi Arabia's Royal Guard and National Guard, which French-speaking Wallonia sees as less implicated in the Yemeni conflict, will continue to receive Belgian weapons and ammunition.

In Belgium, licences for arms sales are issued by regional governments, and human rights groups have been lobbying Wallonia to halt shipments to the Saudis.

Saudi Arabia intervened in the almost five-year civil war in its southern neighbour to support the government side, but the conflict has claimed tens of thousands of civilian lives.

The kingdom is one of the world's biggest arms purchasers, spending billions with the United States and the United Kingdom in particular.

Riyadh depends less on Belgium arms, but is nevertheless Wallonia's number one customer, accounting for 225 million euros ($247 million) in a 950 million euro industry in 2018.

FN Herstal, which makes rifles and machine guns, and John Cockerill (CMI), which specialises in gun turrets for armoured vehicles, employ 4,400 Belgians between them.

The regional government is FN Herstal's sole shareholder.

Wallonia's announcement came as a coalition of human rights groups denounced the imminent arrival in France of a cargo ship said to be picking up European weapons for the Saudis.

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