According to a military source quoted by the official SANA news agency, the security forces arrested on the first day of combing actions a number of drug traffickers in the western Deraa province, in addition to seizing quantities of weapons and hashish.

The source clarified that the field operations will continue until the drug trafficking is completely stopped and the drug traffickers are captured and brought to justice.

At the end of last June, Syria and Jordan agreed during the first meeting of the Joint Cooperation Committee against border drug trafficking held in Amman, the Jordanian capital, to take measures to dry up the sources of production and break the drug smuggling routes.

On June 16, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told a joint press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Muhammad Shia al-Sudani that drugs and terrorism are two sides of the same coin.

The Government denied accusations by some Western countries that the Arab nation supports drug trafficking, and assured that the increase in consumption is due to the complex political and security conditions and the use of narcotics as one of the tools of terrorism, with the aim of destroying stability and sowing chaos in the country.

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