Saudi authorities arrested eight people including two Pakistanis and seized nearly 47 million amphetamine pills in a major drug raid in Riyadh, authorities announced on Wednesday.

Officers from the Saudi General Directorate of Narcotics Control arrested six Syrian and two Pakistani citizens, who are all residents of the kingdom, after they found the pills hidden in a large shipment of flour.

A spokesman for the Saudi General Directorate of Narcotics Control said it was the “biggest operation of its kind to smuggle this amount of narcotics into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in one operation”, the agency said.

The authority also shared a video on its official Twitter handle showing the piles of drugs, as well as the backs of the suspects after the raid.

The report did not specify whether the pills were captagon – the amphetamine wreaking havoc across the Middle East – nor did it say where the pills came from.

Captagon pills are produced mainly in Syria and smuggled to large consumer markets in the Gulf.

Trade in captagon in the Middle East grew exponentially in 2021 to top $5 billion, posing an increasing health and security risk to the region, a report by the New Lines Institute said in April.

Saudi Arabia is the biggest captagon market, and the kingdom’s customs body seized 119 million of the pills last year.

With input from AFP