State media reported on Wednesday that Saudi officers foiled an attempt to smuggle 47 million amphetamine pills into the country.

In a raid, six Syrians and two Pakistanis were arrested after the pills arrived at a dry port in Riyadh and were taken to a warehouse, according to the Saudi Press Agency.

It was the "biggest operation of its kind to smuggle this amount of narcotics into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in one operation", the Saudi General Directorate of Narcotics Control said.

Reports did not specify if the pills were captagon - the amphetamine wreaking havoc across the Middle East - nor where they came from.

Captagon pills are mainly produced in Syria and are smuggled into large Gulf markets.

In April, the New Lines Institute reported that captagon trade in the Middle East grew exponentially in 2021 to top $5 billion, posing a health and security threat.

The kingdom's customs body seized 119 million captagon pills last year, making it the world's biggest captagon market.

Saudi ambassador to Beirut Waleed Bukhari told reporters Tuesday that the kingdom had seized over 700 million narcotic pills over the past eight years from Lebanon.