As Damascus over the past months sought an end to armed "terrorist" groups' indiscriminate attacks across Syria, arms smuggling from neighboring Lebanon just flourished.

The risky yet highly profitable business has doubled the number of people involved in it within a short period of time.

Although "traders" are subject to shadowing and hunting by both the Lebanese and Syrian security forces, they carried on with the business, despite such troubles and risks as infiltrating the border areas and the mine fields planted on the Syrian side.

One of the traffickers, who spoke under the pseudonym of Mozaffar Ghadban, said "mules have become the best means as we started using them to ship the weapons as a substitute to our cars following the closure of the legal and illegal crossing points on the borders by the army of Lebanon and Syria."

"Arms trafficking is very dangerous, it involves more than one gang across the border, this operation is run by one mastermind and those involved don't know the names of their colleagues," he told Xinhua.

"The weapons are bought from the Lebanese local market, most of which are light weapons, including AK 47 that costs between 2,500 to 3,000 U.S. dollars, and M16 assault rifle with a price from 4, 000 to 5,000 dollars," Ghadban said.

"The price of a bullet rose to around 2 dollars," the smuggler said, adding that "those prices lure anyone who owns more than one piece to come to sell."

As for the arms traffickers, one of the gang leaders who identified himself as Zaher Darwich -- of course a false name -- told Xinhua that "among us there are those who oppose the Syrian regime and those who support it, but we share the common pursuit of profit."

He explained that the mission is distributed among three groups, one buying the weapons and ammunition, the second handling the packing and providing the shelters to avoid the raids of security forces, while the third group loading the weapons on mules and starting the trip through the outskirts of the Sowaira and Manra villages in western Bekaa and sometimes through the Anjar Valley to Syria.

"Each mule carries about 10 light weapons, which are usually concealed by food stuff (needed) on the Syrian market. The trip takes normally 8 to 10 hours and we deliver the weapons in different Syrian regions such as Zabadani and Madaya near Damascus, " he said.

Darwich said "we do not know the identity of those who receive the weapons and delivery is done after exchanging code words."

"We receive half of the payment in Lebanon prior to our departure and the remaining we receive after the delivery and upon our return. We load the mules again with Syrian commodities popular in Lebanon such as Mazout (fuel oil) and cotton underwear, " the trafficker added.

This business is like any other blackmarket trade, according to a smuggler who identified himself to Xinhua as Faisal Jallab. " Treason accompanies the smuggling as some competing gangs try to leak information about a trafficking process to the Syrian security apparatus in an effort to benefit itself and to cover their trade," he said.

"In some cases we have to bribe the security elements to secure our road, but this process is uncertain as we might confront an unexpected surprise and we get caught, which is a total loss that would be nearly impossible to recover," Jallab said, adding that " in some cases we may have an armed confrontation with the Lebanese customs, and in these cases the price might be our lives."

According to Jallab, the undercover agents working for the Lebanese security forces have "undermined the work of traffickers but did not stop the business."