Smuggler swallows 220 diamonds on way to Dubai

South African police on Wednesday said they had caught a Lebanese man who swallowed 220 polished diamonds in an audacious bid to smuggle them from Johannesburg to Dubai.

Officers arrested the 25-year-old at Johannesburg's international airport carrying the gems, worth an estimated $2.3 million.

"We nabbed him just before he went through the security checkpoint," said Paul Ramaloko, spokesman of the South Africa elite police unit, the Hawks.

"We had to take him through the X-ray and take them out from his body," he told AFP.

South Africa is among the world's top producers of diamonds.