The Border Guard seized a boat containing 17 tons of qat and smaller quantities of hashish and other drugs at Jeddah Islamic Port recently.

Sources at the Border Guard said the officers found the boat at the entrance of the port, at the waiting area for ships. There was no crew on board.

Initial investigations showed the boat came from Yemen. Bad weather in the southwest of Saudi Arabia might have thrown the boat off course. It is suspected that the crew abandoned the vessel because they did not want to get caught.

Marine Col. Naji Al-Juhani, spokesman of the Saudi Coast Guard in Makkah, said investigations are under way to determine how the boat reached the port. The Jazan Border Guard said that border forces thwarted several smuggling operations over the past year.

Maj. Gen Abdullah bin Muhammad Mahfouz, spokesman of the Border Guard command in Jazan, said officers seized 195,000 pieces of ammunition, 5,500 firearms, 55 bottles of liquor, 2,600 tons of khat, 12 tons of hashish and 10,000 pills.