$5 million drug haul as Rohingya detained in Bangladesh

Bangladesh police arrested a Rohingya man with $5 million of methamphetamine pills in their biggest narcotics haul this year, officials said Monday.

Special police staged a raid on a beach in the Cox's Bazar district on the border with Myanmar on Sunday following a tip that a trawler carrying the drugs would land there, a spokesman said.

The spokesman said 800,000 pills were found in sacks in the trawler and one Rohingya suspect was detained while several others escaped.

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Some 740,000 Rohingya Muslims flooded across the border after a Myanmar military clampdown in August 2017 and drug dealing has become a growing problem in the refugee camps in Cox's Bazar where they live.

The seizure was the biggest made this year of the methamphetamine pills, known as yaba, which have become a popular drug among young people in the nation of 168 million.

Since a crackdown was launched last year, more than 500 suspected drug traffickers -- including at least 25 Rohingya -- have been shot dead by police and security forces.