Syria foils drug smuggling attempts at Lebanon, Jordan borders
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Syrian authorities announced on Thursday that they had thwarted separate attempts to smuggle narcotics through border crossings with Lebanon and Jordan, including shipments of hashish and captagon pills.
The General Authority for Land and Sea Ports said in a statement that customs officers at the Jdeidet Yabous border crossing with Lebanon seized quantities of narcotics concealed inside a vehicle entering Syria.
According to the statement, customs personnel discovered around 23 kilograms of hashish and an additional 50 grams of an unidentified substance hidden inside food containers.
The authority added that officers also searched the driver’s bag and found captagon pills and other substances. The suspect was referred to the relevant authorities, while the seized materials were handed over for legal procedures.
The authority said border inspection measures had been intensified as part of ongoing efforts to curb smuggling operations and “protect community security.”
In a separate operation announced earlier on Thursday, the Syrian Interior Ministry said its Anti-Narcotics Department had foiled an attempt to smuggle a large shipment of captagon pills toward Jordan using remotely controlled balloons equipped with GPS tracking systems.
The ministry said on its official Telegram channel that authorities seized around 142,000 captagon pills along with balloons fitted with GPS devices used to direct them during the smuggling attempt.
Syrian authorities have in recent months announced several anti-smuggling operations targeting regional trafficking networks.
On April 26, the Anti-Narcotics Department said it had dismantled an international smuggling network operating across the region after carrying out security operations in the Damascus countryside and Homs in coordination with Iraqi anti-drug authorities. The operations reportedly prevented the transfer of large quantities of narcotics.