Pakistani authorities have seized 1.2 tonnes of opium from a house in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, a police official said on Monday.

The opium, which officials believe came from the province of Helmand in neighbouring Afghanistan, was hidden in a house in Chaghi, 240 km (150 miles) southwest of Quetta, the provincial capital.

"One man was arrested but there was no clash or violence during the raid last night," the police official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

Baluchistan, the poorest and least developed of Pakistan's four provinces, is a favourite route for the smugglers to bring opium from Afghanistan to send on to the Middle East and Europe to make heroin.

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