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Up to 1,443 people were arrested in Saudi Arabia for drug-related crimes in the last eight months, the interior ministry announced Tuesday.
The spokesperson of the interior ministry added that some 1.9 billion riyals (0.51 billion U.S. dollars) worth of narcotics were confiscated in the same period.
A total of 247 out of the 1,443 arrestees were Saudi and the rest come from 26 nations. A Pakistani man was executed for trafficking heroin in his stomach by Saudi authorities on Tuesday morning.
Two security personnel died and ten others wounded while confronting armed drug gangs in raids; as many as 18 drug traffickers and dealers were killed and 39 others injured in clashes with security forces, according to the spokesperson.
Xinhuanet
