Two security sources affiliated with the Ministry of Interior of the Syrian caretaker government revealed a surprise that the new security authorities found inside the security square affiliated with the ousted regime in the Kafr Sousa area in the center of the capital, Damascus.

One of the sources told AFP that the new authorities in Syria burned large quantities of drugs, including about one million Captagon pills that were widely produced during the rule of ousted President Bashar al-Assad.

The agency's photographer reported that security personnel set fire to quantities of cannabis, boxes of Tramadol (a tranquilizer), and about 50 small bags containing pink Captagon pills in the courtyard of the former regime's security square in Damascus.

A source in the General Security Department said, “The security services affiliated with the new Syrian government found a warehouse for narcotics while combing the capital, Damascus, specifically inside the security square in the Kafr Sousa area,” while another source confirmed the discovery of “nearly or more than a million pills, which we burned immediately.”

On December 8, Syrian armed factions overthrew Bashar al-Assad, after a lightning attack that began on November 27 from northern Syria.

After ruling the country for 24 years, Assad fled to Moscow, marking the end of more than 50 years of Assad rule over the country.

Bashar al-Assad's rule was known for the production of Captagon, which turned the country into a drug state and flooded markets in the Middle East with this substance, a scourge that reached neighboring Iraq and some Gulf states.

US sanctions were imposed on a number of Syrian officials, as Washington suspected them of being involved in this drug trade.

"Protecting the community"

Since the rapid collapse of Bashar al-Assad's rule, large quantities of Captagon pills have been found in various areas of Syria, stacked in warehouses or military bases.

Fighters from the armed factions alliance led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham say they have found a huge quantity of drugs and have vowed to destroy them.

The drugs were destroyed today, Wednesday, in the "security square" that was heavily guarded and surrounded during the ousted regime in the Kafr Sousa neighborhood of Damascus, and also contained prisons and detention centers in basements underneath it.

A member of these forces named Hamza explained, “The security services affiliated with the new Syrian government found a warehouse for narcotics while combing the capital, Damascus, specifically inside the security square in the Kafr Sousa area.”

He stressed that the destruction of the stock of "substances including alcohol, cannabis, Captagon pills, and hashish sticks" comes "to protect Syrian society and cut off smuggling routes belonging to companies that were run by the Assad family."

He added that this incident is not the first of its kind, as the security services have found other warehouses and drug production factories and destroyed them.

Captagon has turned Syria into the world’s largest drug-dependent country, generating more than $10 billion in revenue, and has become Syria’s biggest export, surpassing all of its legal exports combined, according to estimates based on official data compiled by Agence France-Presse during a 2022 investigation.

The conflict, which erupted in 2011 after a peaceful protest movement was violently suppressed by the regime of Bashar al-Assad, has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions.