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DUBAI: Security forces from Jordan’s Eastern Military Zone have again foiled two large-scale drug-smuggling attempts along the country’s eastern border on Monday.

Border guards detected aerial objects, equipped with primitive navigation devices, loaded with significant quantities of narcotics, state news agency Petra reported.

The guards swiftly intercepted and downed the devices at two separate locations before securing the illicit cargo inside Jordanian territory.

The seized materials were transferred to the relevant authorities for investigation and legal procedures, Petra added.

Jordan is known as a transit point for the smuggling of captagon, an addictive, amphetamine-type stimulant that for years has been mass-produced in Syria.

Smugglers are increasingly using drones, widely available in southern Syria, where they sell for between $4,000 and $8,000, to transport small quantities of high-value, low-weight drugs.

Jordan and Syria agreed in January to form a joint security committee to secure their border, combat arms and drug smuggling and work to prevent the resurgence of Daesh.

Thousands of mourners attended a funeral at the largest mosque in Yemen’s capital Sanaa on Monday for 12 senior Houthi figures, including their prime minister, who were killed by an Israeli strike. Last Thursday’s attack, the first to kill top officials, struck a large number of people who had gathered to watch a televised speech recorded by top Houthi leader Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, and it left most members of the group’s cabinet dead.
Mourners chanted the Houthi slogan “God is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam,” as Mohammed Miftah, now de facto head of the Iran-aligned government in Sanaa, vowed revenge as well as an internal security crackdown against spies.
“We are facing the strongest intelligence empire in the world, the one that targeted the government — the whole Zionist entity (comprising) the US administration, the Zionist entity, the Zionist Arabs and the spies inside Yemen,” Miftah told the crowd of mourners at the Al Saleh mosque.
Miftah became the acting head of the Houthis’ government on Saturday following the death in the Israeli strike of Prime Minister Ahmad Ghaleb Al-Rahwi. Al-Rahwi was largely a figurehead and not part of the inner circle of power.
Miftah had previously been his deputy. A raid on the United Nations offices in Sanaa on Sunday led to the detention of at least 11 UN personnel, the body said. The Houthis have given no reason for the raid but they have held a number of Yemeni employees of the UN and other aid agencies in the past on suspicion of spying.
Israel said on Friday its airstrike had targeted the Houthis’ chief of staff, defense minister and other senior officials and that it was verifying the outcome.
The fate of the Houthis’ powerful defense minister, Mohamed Al-Atifi, who runs the Missiles Brigades Group, remains unclear as he has not made an appearance since the attack.

THORN IN ISRAEL’S SIDE
Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, who remains alive, has emerged in recent years as one of Iran’s most prominent Arab allies and an enduring thorn in Israel’s side after it weakened many of its enemies in the region, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Since Israel’s war in Gaza against the Palestinian militant group Hamas began in October 2023, the Houthis have attacked vessels in the Red Sea in what they describe as acts of solidarity with the Palestinians.
The Red Sea attacks have drawn US and Israeli strikes. In May, President Donald Trump said the US would stop bombing the Houthis after a brief campaign, saying the group had agreed to halt interrupting important shipping lanes in the Middle East.
But the Houthis, one of Iran’s few allies still standing since the Gaza war spilled across the Middle East, vowed to continue attacking Israel and Israeli-linked shipping. The Houthis said on Monday they had launched a missile toward the Liberia-flagged Israeli-owned tanker ‘Scarlet Ray’ ship near ������Ƶ’s Red Sea port city of Yanbu.