BEIRUT - Lebanese counter-narcotics officers backed by troops destroyed 2.5 hectares (six acres) of opium poppies in the eastern Bekaa Valley on Tuesday, the official ANI news agency said.

The poppies destroyed in the Wadi Halabta area were just 10 days from being harvested, the news agency added.

It was the first announcement of a drug interdiction operation in the Bekaa since Syria completed a troop pullout last month ending a 29-year deployment.

Syrian troops had regularly taken part in operations to destroy opium and cannabis crops in the Bekaa before their withdrawal.

At the height of the 1975-1990 civil war, Lebanon earned as much as four billion dollars a year from the drugs trade but since 1994 it has launched a campaign to eradicate cultivation under US-led pressure.

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