Iran Border Guards Clash with Bandits Near Border with Pakistan


Iran Border Guards Clash with Bandits Near Border with Pakistan

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A top Iranian border police commander said Sunday that an armed man was killed and another one arrested in clashes with border guards near the border with Pakistan and that 1.5 tons of illegal drugs were recovered from traffickers.

Deputy Commander of Border Police Brigadier General Ahmad Garavand said that the Iranian border guards in Nagour and Jakigour regions in Sistan and Balouchestan province clashed with a group of armed bandits and smugglers who intended to enter the country.

“The Iranian border guards got engaged in an operation to block the path of the intruders immediately,” added the commander.

Brigadier General Garavand said that in the course of heavy exchange of fire between the border guards and the armed bandits and smugglers one of the armed men was killed while another one was captured alive.

After interrogating the arrested bandit, the Iranian officers found out the hideout for some 1,245 kilos of hashish the traffickers had intended to smuggle into the country.

Deputy Commander of Border Police said that in another operation in Saravan region the border guards managed to repel a group of  bandits who were trying to enter Iran and seized some 260 kilograms of opium from them.

On October 25, fourteen Iranian border guards lost their lives in an ambush attack by a terrorist group on a border post near the city of Saravan in southwestren Iran. Six more soldiers were wounded in the raid.

In recent decades Iran has been hit by drug trafficking, mainly because of its 936- kilometer shared border with Afghanistan, which supplies over 90% of the world's opium, the raw ingredient of heroin.

The United Nations has estimated in the past that opium trafficking accounts for up 15 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, but the figure is expected to rise as international military and development spending declines with the NATO withdrawal at the end of 2014.

Iran is on a major transit route for drugs being smuggled from Afghanistan to Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and the country's war on drug-traffickers has claimed the lives of nearly 4,000 Iranian police forces over the past 34 years.

Iran says it has spent more hundreds of millions of dollars on building barriers along lengthy stretches of its 1,700-kilometre eastern border with Afghanistan and Pakistan in a bid to stop the trafficking.

 

Most Visited in Society/Culture
Top Society/Culture stories
Top Stories