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LONDON: A shipload of tramadol, a synthetic opioid-like drug used as painkiller, sent from India to be sold to Islamic State terrorists in Libya to give them greater resilience has been seized by the Italian police, according to media reports on Wednesday.

News agency PTI, quoting a report in The Times, said 37 million tramadol pills, worth $75 million, were found packed into three containers at the port of Genoa, labelled as blankets and shampoo and set to be loaded on a freighter bound for Misrata and Tobruk in Libya.

“ISIS is making a fortune from this traffic, giving it to its fighters to make them feel no pain,“ the British newspaper quoted an Italian investigator as saying.

Italian investigators traced the shipment to an Indian pharmaceuticals company, which allegedly sold the pills to a Dubai-based importer, which then shipped them from India to Sri Lanka where they disappeared from the freighter's documents, the newspaper report said.

