Gardai seize drugs worth €3m

Two men were being held last night after gardaí seized cannabis worth almost €3 million in north Dublin.

Some 400kgs of cannabis resin, with an estimated street value of €2.8 million, was discovered after a van was stopped off the M50 motorway in north Co Dublin. A follow-up search in the north inner city yielded a small amount of drugs and a gun. An articulated truck was also impounded.

The men, aged 41 and 24, were being held at Whitehall and Malahide Garda stations under section two of the Drug Trafficking Act. They can be held for up to seven days.

A Garda spokeswoman said the seizure, which involved officers from the national drugs unit and the national surveillance unit, was part of an ongoing operation.

Meanwhile, gardaí in Finglas have recovered a sawn-off shotgun which they believe was used to shoot a 23-year-old man in Berryfield Drive on Saturday morning. They believe a lone gunman carried out the attack and fled the scene on foot.

Gardaí have also charged another man with drugs offences following a shooting in a house on the Navan Road in Dublin on Saturday night in which two Lithuanian men were injured. The victims were attacked by a group of men who called to a house at Ashington Heath just before 10pm following an earlier row at the house between two groups of Lithuanians.

Two others who were arrested in connection with the shooting were released without charge.

Separately, gardaí are investigating the stabbing of a man in Finglas early on Sunday morning. The man was stabbed at a house party at Cappagh Avenue at about 2.15am, and brought to hospital in a serious condition. A Garda spokeswoman said no connection had been made between this incident and the two shootings in north Dublin on Saturday.

In the past 10 days two people have been murdered and four others injured in gun attacks in north and west Dublin.

Meanwhile, customs officers intercepted a cocaine smuggler at Dublin airport on Sunday night. The man, a 26-year-old US national who had arrived from Charleroi in Belgium, was found to have swallowed pellets of cocaine worth about €56,000. He was arrested by officers from the Garda drug squad at Santry.

Last week a 26-year-old Estonian man was arrested after arriving from Charleroi having ingested a similar amount of cocaine.

John Curran, a Fianna Fáil Dublin Mid-West TD, praised yesterday's cannabis seizure as "another victory for the gardaí" in cutting off the supply lines of drug gangs.