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.