Iran Border Police Seize Huge Drug Cargo
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Border police forces in Iran’s southeastern province of Sistan and Balouchestan seized a huge cargo of opium weighing more than 1 ton, a police commander said on Sunday.
Commander of Sistan and Balouchestan's Border Police Gholam Nabi Kohkan said his forces confiscated 1,219 kilograms of opium from drug-traffickers in a single operation.
He noted that the cargo was seized following the intelligence measures to monitor a vehicle carrying the illicit cargo, adding that armed police waited in an ambush to block the traffickers’ way.
The drug-traffickers fled into Pakistan and left their vehicle on the border after heavy armed clashes, the commander added.
Over the past five months, the Iranian Border Police have managed to seize more than 40 tons of various types of narcotic drugs.
Iran’s Border Police Commander General Hossein Zolfaqari said on Wednesday that at present 70% of the country's sea and land borders are carefully controlled.
"In the past five months some 40 tons of narcotics have been confiscated along the country's borders, and at present smuggling through the sea and in smaller quantities is on the rise," the commander said, a trend he attributed to the sealing of large parts of the country's land borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In recent decades Iran has been hit by drug trafficking, mainly because of its 936- kilometer shared border with Afghanistan, where the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said 74% of the world’s opium was produced in 2012.
According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Iran is netting eight times more opium and three times more heroin than all other countries in the world combined.