COLOMBO (AFP) - Sri Lankan police on Thursday (May 11) made one of their biggest heroin hauls in years, days after unidentified gunmen shot dead an anti-narcotics agent near Colombo.
Police said the 200-kilogramme haul - worth more than two billion rupees (S$18.5 million) on the street - was found stashed inside plastic bags in a car north of Colombo.
It was the biggest heroin seizure since 2013, when 260kg were taken off the street, police said.
The seizure came after a drugs agent was killed Tuesday in a shootout that also wounded several other officers.
"Our latest detection shows we will not be deterred by attacks against our men," police said in a statement.
It is suspected the drugs were smuggled by boat into Sri Lanka. Police believe the Indian Ocean island is being used as a transit point by traffickers.
Last June, anti-narcotics authorities seized 90kg of cocaine concealed in sugar containers from Brazil. Two months earlier police detained 14 foreigners after seizing 110kg of heroin worth US$7.5 million from an Iranian fishing trawler.