Jordan army says killed 27 drug smugglers on Syria border
Amman, Jordan | AFP | Thursday 1/27/2022 - 06:45 UTC-5
The Jordanian army killed 27 drug smugglers in a clash early Thursday as they tried to enter the kingdom from Syria, it said in a statement.
The traffickers were supported by an armed group, the army said, adding that "a preliminary search was conducted in the area, and large quantities of narcotics were found."
It was the deadliest clash yet in the Jordanian army's fight against smugglers on the Syrian border, whose activities have intensified in recent months.
The military operation at dawn "thwarted attempts to infiltrate and smuggle large quantities of narcotics from Syrian territory into Jordanian territory," the army said.
"The smugglers were supported by other armed groups," added the army, which said its troops also wounded an unknown number of traffickers while others fled back into Syrian territory.
Britain-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has an extensive network of sources in war-torn Syria, also reported the clash, labelling it an "attempt to smuggle drugs from the region of Suweida" in southern Syria.
The Jordanian military warned that it would "respond firmly to any infiltration or smuggling attempts and prevent anyone from attempting to undermine national security."
- Rise in trafficking -
On January 17, Jordan's army announced that an officer had been killed and three border guards wounded in a clash with drug smugglers on the Syrian border.
Several days later, one of the wounded soldiers died of his injuries.
Jordan, which has been hosting about 1.6 million Syrian refugees since the outbreak of the conflict in 2011, has in recent years tightened controls along its border with Syria, which stretches for more than 350 kilometres (220 miles).
Several dozen fighters, many of them extremists, have been arrested and imprisoned for attempting to enter Syrian territory from Jordan to fight in the civil war.
Jordanian authorities say that 85 percent of the drugs seized in the country are meant to transit the kingdom and bound for other countries.
Last September, Jordan fully reopened its main border crossing with Syria to boost trade, but fears have been raised over increased drug smuggling.
Organisations monitoring the illegal drug trade say the majority of captagon, an amphetamine-type stimulant made and consumed in the Middle East, originates in government-held regions of Syria.
According to an EU-funded report by the Center for Operational Analysis and Research, "captagon exports from Syria reached a market value of at least $3.46 billion" in 2020.