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Guatemala City, Sep 6 (IANS/EFE) Police found an industrial-scale synthetic-drug lab in a rural area near the Mexican border, Guatemala's interior ministry said Wednesday. The facility in the village of San Isidro is the "largest and most-industrialized drug laboratory" dismantled in Guatemala in recent years, a ministry spokeswoman said. "The clandestine site was discovered by authorities in an area full of weeds, on whose edge they found several marijuana plants hidden among maize, at a distance of 2 km from the road," she said. Five men working at the lab fled into the nearby mountains when they realized the police were approaching. The lab contained some finished drugs as well as raw materials for making substances such as methamphetamine. Police also seized cylinders of propane gas, ovens, electric generators and other equipment, the interior ministry said. Guatemala has been a transit and warehousing center for international drug cartels for a number of years, but officials recently suggested that the Central American country is becoming a secondary hub for processing illicit substances. --IANS/EFE rd
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