Police in Guangxi on Monday announced the seizure of 44.56 kilograms of drugs and the arrest of 43 suspected traffickers in the largest bust ever in the southern China autonomous region.

Police seized 44.56 kg of ketamine, 1.6 tons of materials for making drugs, 480,000 yuan (67,550 U.S. dollars) in cash and a homemade sand-blasting gun during a four-month investigation around the region, a regional public security bureau official said.

It was the largest number of suspects ever caught in one operation by regional police, he added. The drugs seized was mainly ketamine.

In October, police discovered that gang leader Zeng Yujie was suspected to have set up a secret drug factory in Bingyang County. A special investigation team was formed the following month.

More than 500 policemen formed 20 teams and identified and arrested the major suspects in Nanning, Bingyang and Wuming in the early morning of Jan. 21.

Police later caught other suspects in Guilin, Rongshui, Bingyang and Nanning in the region. Four of Zeng's consignors were caught on March 1 in Shayang County in the central Hubei Province.

No date was given for their trial.

In mid-January, it was announced that Chinese border police had cracked 12,449 criminal cases in 2007, involving drugs, arms and human trafficking, as well as smuggling.

Border police, or the Frontier Defense Force (FDF), cracked 3,071 drug smuggling cases and seized a variety of banned substances with a total weight of 2,368 kilograms. They also broke up 46 gun trafficking cases and seized 1,085 weapons and more than 20,000 bullets.

(Xinhua News Agency, March 4, 2008)