The Petra news agency quoted an army official as saying one of the vehicles and its cargo was destroyed when it was fired on by border guards during the operation late on Wednesday.

The other was found to be carrying 209 weapons, which the report did not identify, and 10,000 capsules of Captagon, the brand name for the amphetamine phenethylline.

The military official gave no indication of the number of cross-border smugglers in the vehicles, nor their nationalities.

Militants fighting to topple the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, many of them affiliated with extremist groups, widely use Captagon in their battles, while sales of the drug reportedly generate millions of dollars for weapons purchases.

The war which has been going on in Syria since March 2011, has been marked with extremist acts of violence.

Jordanian authorities announced at the beginning of the year that trafficking of arms between Jordan and Syria was up by 300 percent despite hundreds of smuggling attempts being foiled by the authorities.

Commentators said Jordanians were rushing to buy arms, fearing a spillover of the conflict that has laid waste to much of neighboring Syria over the past three years.

Jordan's interior ministry estimates that while 120,000 weapons are legally registered, there are more than one million illegal arms in a country with a population of seven million.

SHI/SHI