DUSHANBE, December 18 (RIA Novosti) – Three armed drug traffickers were shot dead by border guards while trying to smuggle opium between Afghanistan and Tajikistan, officials said Wednesday.
Tajik border guards killed the smugglers, who were carrying 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of opium and a Kalashnikov automatic rifle, after they refused to heed warning shots, the press service for the Central Asian nation’s state committee for national security said in a statement. It did not specify when the incident occurred.
The committee said that police were tipped off about the operation while questioning a Tajik man who was arrested in early December with one kilogram of heroin.
Drugs from Afghanistan – the world’s largest heroin producer – commonly travel along a so-called northern route through Central Asia to reach Russia’s estimated $6 billion heroin market, according to Russia’s state drug control service head Viktor Ivanov.
Some 30,000 Russians die from heroin use every year, according to official statistics.
