CAIRO: A Jordanian border guard was killed and another was wounded during clashes on Tuesday with dozens of drug smugglers along the country's northern border with Syria, a military source quoted by Petra News Agency said.
The Jordanian Armed Forces source said the smugglers were trying to bring into Jordan “a substantial quantity of narcotics from Syria” while taking advantage of fog and low visibility, the statement said.
“During the exchange, Officer Iyad Abdel Hamid Naimi of the Border Guard forces was fatally shot,” it added.
Jordanian authorities have aborted similar smuggling attempts over the past months, including some in which smugglers used drones to fly the drugs over the border.
The Captagon industry has been a huge concern for Jordan, as well as Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, as hundreds of millions of pills have been smuggled over the years. The drug is used recreationally and by people with physically demanding jobs to keep them alert.
Captagon production have turned into an estimated multi-billion-dollar industry in war-torn Syria.
