On Sunday, the Jordanian army announced in a statement that it had killed four smugglers and wounded others as they tried to cross the border from Syria into the kingdom while carrying large quantities of drugs. The statement cited an official military source in the General Command of the Armed Forces: “The border monitors of the Border Troops, in coordination with the security services and the Department of Drug Control, recorded a group of people arriving from Syrian territory. into Jordanian territory and attempted to illegally cross the border with the support of armed groups.”
He explained that “the operation, carried out at dawn, resulted in the killing of 4 smugglers, wounding several of them and the escape of others into the depths of Syria.” He added: “After the intensification of search and search activities in the area, 637,000 Captagon tablets, 181 hash palms, 39,600 tramadol tablets and a Kalashnikov assault rifle were found. The confiscated items have been handed over to the competent authorities.”
Jordan, which has taken in some 1.6 million Syrian refugees since the Syrian crisis began in March 2011, has tightened measures along its more than 300 km border with Syria over the past few years and arrested and imprisoned dozens of militants, many of them are extremists, for trying to penetrate the territory. The Syrians fight there.
