This is the ninth drug-laden drone shot down by Jordanian authorities this year
Updated 06 September 2023
Arab News
LONDON: Jordanian authorities shot down a drone laden with crystal meth making its way from Syria, Jordan’s Armed Forces said in a statement on Monday.
In the ninth incident of its kind this year, Jordanian border guards and the counternarcotics officials thwarted the drone’s attempt to smuggle the drugs through Jordan’s northern border.
With war-torn Syria emerging as a major center for a lucrative drug trade, Jordan has become a primary transit route to the oil-rich Gulf states for the Syrian-manufactured amphetamine, Captagon.
“The Jordanian Armed Forces continue to deal with force and commitment with any threat on the border and any attempts to destabilize the country and terrorize its citizens,” said a Jordanian military source, according to the army’s statement.
Across its 375 km desert border with Syria, Jordan has seen hundreds of attempts to smuggle narcotics since the civil war erupted in Syria in 2011. Last month alone, three drug-laden drones flying from Syria were intercepted by the Jordanian authorities.
Jordanian authorities have accused members of the Syrian regime and allied Iranian militias of involvement in smuggling operations across the border.
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US touts ‘New Gaza’ filled with luxury real estate
Updated 6 sec ago
Davos, Switzerland: US officials on Thursday presented their vision for a “New Gaza” that would turn the shattered Palestinian territory into a glitzy resort of skyscrapers by the sea, saying the transformation could emerge in three years. The war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, left much of the Palestinian territory damaged or destroyed and forced most of its residents to flee their homes. A US-brokered ceasefire took effect last October, reducing the level of bombing and fighting, but for most Gazans, the humanitarian disaster has endured three months on. “We’re going to be very successful in Gaza. It’s going to be a great thing to watch,” President Donald Trump said while presenting his controversial “Board of Peace” conflict-resolution body in Davos. “I’m a real estate person at heart... and I said, look at this location on the sea. Look at this beautiful piece of property. What it could be for so many people,” he said at the World Economic Forum. His son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has no official title but is one of Trump’s envoys for the Gaza ceasefire, said his “master plan” aimed for “catastrophic success.” With a slide showing dozens of shiny terraced apartment towers overlooking a tree-lined promenade, he promised a Mediterranean utopia rising from the scarred Gaza landscape. “In the Middle East they build cities like this, you know for two or three million people, they build this in three years,” Kushner said. “And so stuff like this is very doable if we make it happen.” He touted investments of at least $25 billion to rebuild destroyed infrastructure and public services. Within 10 years, the territory’s GDP would be $10 billion, and households would enjoy average income of $13,000 a year thanks to “100-percent full employment and opportunity for everybody there,” he said. “It could be a hope. It could be a destination, have a lot of industry and really be a place that the people there can thrive.”
’Amazing’ opportunities
Kushner said the so-called National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) had enlisted help from Israeli real estate developer Yakir Gabay. “He’s volunteered to do this not for profit, really because of his heart he wants to do this,” Kushner said. “So the next 100 days, we’re going to continue to just be heads down and focused on making sure this is implemented.” Trump had earlier in the conflict floated his vision of turning Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East,” sparking outrage around the world. Notably absent from Kushner’s presentation was Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, whose country had spearheaded in 2025 a reconstruction plan for Gaza supported by Arab nations and welcomed by the European Union. According to a brief statement from his office, El-Sisi flew home at dawn on Thursday, hours after he and Trump exchanged praise in a tete-a-tete, with the US president calling him “a great leader, a great guy.” Ali Shaath, Gaza’s recently appointed administrator under Trump’s “Board of Peace,” has said the Egyptian plan was the “foundation” of his committee’s reconstruction project. A top UN official warned this month that Gazans were living in “inhumane” conditions even as the US-backed truce entered its second phase. Entire neighborhoods, hospitals and schools have been heavily damaged or destroyed, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to live in makeshift shelters. Kushner said 85 percent of Gaza’s economic output had been aid for a long time. “That’s not sustainable. It doesn’t give these people dignity. It doesn’t give them hope,” he said. He insisted that the full disarming of Hamas, as called for in the October ceasefire, would convince firms and donors to commit to the territory. “We’ll announce a lot of the contributions that will be made in a couple of weeks in Washington,” he said. “There’ll be amazing investment opportunities.” Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, and 251 people were taken hostage that day, including 44 who were dead. Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza has killed at least 71,562 people, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable. The ministry also said 477 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire took effect on October 10.
