Drug traffickers have killed 11 policemen in eastern Iran, local police were quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency on Saturday. The confrontation occurred on Friday in a desert area of eastern Iran, which lies on a major narcotics route from neighbouring Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"In clashes between police and a narcotics convoy headed from south to north, seven policemen were killed and four others were injured who died later of their severe injuries," Colonel Kazem Hashemabadi said. According to UN estimates, about 40 percent of the 7,700 tonnes of narcotics produced in Afghanistan in 2008 entered Iran, which also faces serious drug abuse among its mostly youthful population of 70 million. For decades, Iran has been battling traffickers and it has lost more than 3,700 men in a relentless war on its porous eastern border.
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