TEHRAN -- The national police anti-narcotics headquarters said here Tuesday that over 900kg of illicit drugs have been seized throughout the country over the past few days.

It said police in Kerman Province seized 150kg of opium and in Zabol and Mirjaveh in Sistan-Baluchestan nabbed 176kg of narcotics.

Anti-drug police forces in Khorasan Province, in clashes with smugglers, seized 65kg of opium and arrested nine traffickers involved.

The report also said that police in Fars and Qazvin provinces nabbed 352kg of assorted narcotics.

Police forces in the provinces of Yazd, Isfahan and Sistan- Baluchestan also seized 170kg of illicit drugs and arrested five traffickers in separate operations, the report concluded.

Iran sits on the crossroads of the international drug trade originating from Afghanistan and Pakistan and stretching to the Persian Gulf Arab states, Europe and beyond.

More than 3,100 members of Iranian armed forces have been killed in clashes with drug traffickers since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

According to official estimates, Iran's anti-drug campaign costs the country $800 million each year.

According to another report, Iranian police seized 52.5 kilos of hashish in the southeastern Kerman Province over the week in shoot-outs with drug traffickers and arrested four people who had links to the bandits, police in Kerman said Wednesday.

Other drug hauls, amounting to near 140 kilos of opium, were made in northern Mazandaran Province and central Yazd Province, during which two drug traffickers were killed and four others arrested.