![]() ![]() “When we take any step to protect our national security or confront any threat we will announce it in the right time,” he said. Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi declined to confirm his country had carried out the strike when he was asked during a news conference. Two regional intelligence and a Western diplomatic source who tracks the situation in southern Syria confirmed that Jordanian war planes had hit the two drug-related targets in a rare raid inside Syria since the more than a decade-old conflict began. He had been sentenced to death on several occasions in recent years in absentia by Jordanian courts for drugs trafficking, judicial sources say. Ramthan, a major drug dealer in southern Syria, has recruited hundreds of Bedouin transporters who join the ranks of Iran-linked militias that hold sway in southern Syria, Jordanian and regional intelligence sources say. ![]() The drugs factory in the Daraa town of Kharab al Shahem was believed to have been a meeting point for Hezbollah-paid smugglers, Marouf said, corroborating accounts by local sources familiar with the matter. “Both Ramthan’s home and the facility were left in ruins,” said Ryan Marouf, a Syrian researcher tracking the drug trade. The sources said one strike hit an abandoned drug facility in Syria’s southern Daraa province linked to the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, which is allied to Syria’s government.Īnother strike on the village of Shaab, in the adjacent province of Sweida near the Jordanian border, killed Syrian drug kingpin Marie al-Ramthan and his family while they were at home. Jordan carried out rare airstrikes on southern Syria on Monday, hitting an Iran-linked drugs factory and killing a smuggler allegedly behind big hauls across the two countries’ border, local and intelligence sources said.
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