Guatemala torches drug crops in biggest sweep

Guatemalan soldiers and police burned some 700 hectares of fields growing marijuana and poppies used to make heroin in the country's biggest drug operation.

The street value of the marijuana and heroin that could be processed from the destroyed crops is estimated at $US12 ($NZ23) billion, twice the size of Guatemala's national budget, said Fredy Portillo, a spokesman for the president's office.

The weeklong operations deployed around 400 security forces to the mountainous state of San Marcos near the border with Mexico, where powerful Mexican cartels distribute seeds and pay high prices for the illicit harvest.

Much of San Marcos' steep terrain is inaccessible to cars and often blanketed by a thick fog, making it difficult to monitor from the air and ideal for planting illegal crops.

Poor corn farmers, many of them living on less than $US2 a day, are often lured into the trade by the prospect of hefty profits.

President Alvaro Colom says powerful Mexican drug gangs, dominated by the northwestern Sinaloa cartel and the rival east-coast Gulf cartel, are increasing their presence in Guatemala's lawless border region and are corrupting the country's security forces.

The Gulf cartel's armed wing of Zetas hitmen have been known to recruit elite Guatemalan soldiers called "Kaibiles," a unit infamous for human rights abuses against the Mayan population during the country's 1960-1996 civil war.

Five suspected Zetas members were captured in the central highlands on Saturday, accused of drug trafficking and carrying out kidnappings inside Guatemala, the police said.

Mexican smugglers also use Guatemala as a major trafficking hub for South American cocaine on its way to the United States.

- Reuters