US and Afghan forces seized 50 tonnes of opium and 1.8 tonnes of heroin, and killed 17 Taliban insurgents in a joint operation in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, the defence ministry said.
The drug haul, one of the biggest in recent memory, was worth five million dollars, Mohammad Zahir Azimi, ministry spokesman, told AFP.
In a five-hour operation that began at 11:00 am (0630 GMT), the soldiers dropped from helicopters into the Kajaki district of troubled Helmand province, source of most of the world's heroin, he said.
"According to our calculation, we have destroyed five million dollars' worth of drugs today," he said.
"We seized and destroyed 30 tonnes of fertiliser, 1,000 boxes of AK-47 and TK machinegun bullets and other weapons," he said, adding that a factory for making remote-controlled bombs was also destroyed.
"Seventeen Taliban were killed, three were arrested alive," he said.
"The joint forces also destroyed a heroin-making factory," he said, adding that the joint forces suffered no casualties.
He said the fertiliser was of a type used to manufacture improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the main weapon in the Taliban arsenal and causing a large proportion of deaths among forces under US and NATO command.
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