BEIRUT - Customs officers in Lebanon seized more than two million pills of the banned stimulant Captagon aboard a bus from southern Syria on Monday, the customs department said.

"The customs service at Beirut... seized 2.1 million Captagon pills hidden in a bus that came from the Syrian free zone in Daraa that were destined for Qatar," it said in a statement.

It called the haul, valued at five billion Lebanese pounds (3.3 million dollars), "one of the most important drug seizures in the Middle East."

Captagon or fenetylline stimulates the central nervous system. It has remained a popular recreational drug among affluent young people in the Middle East, despite its proscription worldwide in 1986.