VALLETTA, Oct. 13 (Xinhua) -- Five people have been arrested and 550 kg of cannabis have been seized in what the Malta Police Force said on Friday was the country's biggest ever drugs bust.
It included 20 kg of herbal cannabis, with the total street value believed to be millions of euros.
Malta's Assistant Police Commissioner Dennis Theuma said the drugs were found in a car and two large trucks with Italian licence plates which upon closer inspection were found to have false bottoms.
One of the trucks was intercepted in St Julian's while the second was found in Fgura.
Theuma said the arrests were made in the early hours of the Friday morning following 24 hours of surveillance by the police.
Those arrested included one Maltese national, two Italians and two Slovenians.
In addition to the drugs, the police said it recovered 100,000 euros (118,000 U.S. dollars) in cash and did not exclude raising charges of money laundering.
Malta's Minister for Home Affairs Michael Farrugia announced the haul in a tweet on early Friday morning.
The seizure came a month after the police seized 70 kg of cannabis from a cabin cruiser.
Writing on Facebook, Julia Farrugia Portelli, parliamentary secretary overseeing the reform in cannabis laws, congratulated the police on the operation, stressing that the "war on drug traffickers must be escalated". Enditem
