Anti-drug police questioned two Thai nationals after they were arrested with nearly 8kg of methamphetamine on Tuesday at the O’Smach International Border Checkpoint in Konkriel commune in Oddar Meanchey province’s Samrong town.

The Ministry of the Interior’s Anti-Drug Department deputy director Yin Panharith said on Wednesday that the two men, aged 33 and 42, are from Thailand’s Surin province. “Our police are questioning them over the case to find their accomplices,” he said.

The suspects were arrested by the Anti-Drug Department in cooperation with the Oddar Meanchey provincial police and provincial deputy prosecutor Peng Meng Korng.

In the crackdown, police tapped into their network in Thailand and at 3pm on Tuesday the two men crossed the border into Cambodia in a pickup truck. They travelled on National Road 68, where the joint forces stopped and checked their vehicle.

They found eight slabs of methamphetamine weighing 7,979.56 grams that were wrapped with plastic and hidden in a sack.

Panharith said that the suspects’ ringleader in Thailand had ordered them to transport the drugs to their network in Cambodia. The truck was seized along with the drugs.

“I authorised the Oddar Meanchey provincial police to continue working on the case to send them to court,” Meng Korng said.

On the issue of cross-border drug crimes, police had earlier cracked down on cases in Preah Vihear and Stung Treng provinces, where drugs were imported from Laos.

But the Cambodian-Lao border had recently seen fewer drugs activities as offenders changed their focus to bringing it into Oddar Meanchey from Thailand.

“Now drugs are smuggled from Thailand because [drug cases] were not serious and there are less [immigration checks] on the Thai side.

“So drugs are coming into Cambodia from Thailand, and we are strengthening [crackdowns on drugs] along the border. There was not such a problem [with drug trafficking] before,” he said.