Libya's military seizes narcotics after firefight with smugglers

Libya's military brigade seized more than ​1.3 million narcotic pills after ​a firefight with smugglers in a ‌southeastern ​town that injured three soldiers, the military said on Friday. The north African nation has become a major regional transit ‌hub for synthetic drugs and other narcotics en route to domestic users and elsewhere in the continent, the UN said in January.

In a statement, a military media ‌unit said the Subul al-Salam infantry brigade in Kufra, about 1,700 km (1,000 miles) from ‌the capital, Tripoli, targeted hideouts used by traffickers of narcotics and illicit goods. Pictures it posted showed soldiers standing around tens of transparent plastic small bags filled with round white pills bearing the ⁠number one ​and a sentence ⁠in black that read "made in Germany".

The brigade operates under the Land Forces General Staff and owes responsible ⁠to the military commander Khalifa Haftar of the eastern-based Libyan National Army. The statement gave ​no value for the drugs seized.

Drug gangs have exploited the tumultuous situation ⁠in the country since 2011, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said in a January ⁠report. Libya ​plunged into a prolonged period of internal conflict and division after former ruler Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in a NATO-backed uprising that year.

Five people were ⁠handed death sentences by a court in the Western Mountains region, about 160 km (100 ⁠miles) southwest of Tripoli, for ⁠importing more than 2 million pills of psychotropic substances, the attorney general said in October.