The head of the county police crime department, Vitomir Bijelic, said the arrested persons were Croatian citizens aged between 26 and 36. One of them has permanent residence in Zagreb, while the others are from the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County area, he said.
One of those arrested is an active duty military officer and two other are women.
The operation to arrest the group had been prepared for several months by the Office for the Suppression of Corruption and Organised Crime (USKOK) and it included several departments of the Ministry of the Interior and the police departments from Zagreb and Primorje-Gorski Kotar counties.
The police yesterday searched more than a dozen flats, houses and cars used by the suspects and discovered 200 grams of heroin, 28.5 kilograms of commercial and military explosive, eight anti-personnel mines, three hand grenades, two detonators for anti-tank mines, 30 metres of slow-burning fuse, two machine-guns, four automatic rifles, a semi-automatic rifle, a shotgun, an M-48 rifle, a revolver and 3,000 bullets.
The head of the county police department for the suppression of organised crime, Branimir Liker, said the main suspect, born in 1974, had organised the group at the beginning of this year. Some members of the group bought the drugs in Zagreb and transported it to Rijeka, where they sold it or used it themselves.
The police believe that the weapons of military origin were intended for sale.
The suspects will be taken to the Rijeka County Court Investigating Centre. An investigation is under way.