By Xinhua
Kabul : Afghan police have captured 670 kg of opium in the southern province of Helmand, a centre of illicit poppy culture, the Afghan interior ministry said Thursday.
The drug was recovered Wednesday from a car in Washir district of the province, a known hotbed of Taliban militancy, and three people with suspected links to drug trafficking were arrested, it added.
In 2007, some 193,000 hectares in Afghanistan were devoted to the illicit cultivation of poppy, and the Central Asian nation now supplies an estimated 93 percent of world’s opiates, according to a report issued Wednesday by International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), an anti-drug organisation under the UN.
“Afghanistan must do more to address its escalating drug problem,” the INCB said.