SONGKHLA: Soldiers and police seized untaxed cigarettes with a face value of about 11 million baht during a raid on two rented townhouses in Sadao district on Tuesday.
A combined team of police and soldiers searched the two single-storey townhouses on Padang Besar Road at around 11am and found 791 boxes containing 400,000 contraband cigarettes inside the two houses. The seized cigarettes were worth about 11 million baht.
Pol Maj Gen Ekkapop Prasitwattanachai, deputy chief of Provincial Police Region 9, said the two houses were used as storage venues for the untaxed cigarettes believed to have been smuggled from a neighbouring country before being distributed for sale in Songkhla and other nearby provinces.
Officers had kept a close watch on the two houses for several days. After no-one was seen entering or leaving the buildings, a search was conducted, said Pol Maj Gen Ekkapop.
Police were extending the investigation to track down the smugglers.
