CAIRO, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) -- Ten members of a criminal gang were killed and one injured during a police raid on a drug smuggling network in southern Egypt, the Egyptian Interior Ministry said Thursday.

The operation followed investigations confirming that the gang was planning to distribute large quantities of drugs to their clients, the ministry said in a statement, without providing the time frame of the raid.

The gang consisted of 11 convicts who had already been sentenced to prison terms, including life imprisonment, for committing crimes such as drug trafficking, murder, arms smuggling, and armed robbery.

When security forces approached their hideout, the gang opened fire, triggering a shootout that led to the deaths of 10 of them, the ministry said.

In addition to firearms, police confiscated a cache of narcotics with an estimated street value of about 55 million Egyptian pounds (1.09 million U.S. dollars), according to the statement. Enditem

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