15 tons of hashish seized from warehouse

The Internal Security Forces have seized over 15 tons of hashish hidden inside paint buckets in an Ouzai warehouse and intended to be smuggled abroad, the agency said in a tweet Sunday. The warehouse raid was carried out Friday, and all of the suspected members of the criminal gang involved in the drug trafficking were arrested, the ISF said. The labels on the buckets belonged to a paint factory that was not related to the smuggling operation, the ISF added. The judiciary is currently supervising ongoing investigations into the case. Although the ISF and the Lebanese Army regularly make drug busts, the latest incident involves the largest hashish stash to be discovered in over a year.

The illicit materials seized by police in such raids are often burned. In 2017, the state-run National News Agency reported that east Lebanon police had disposed of nearly seven tons of hashish in July.