Ay Huncho trashes rivals as Sydney gang war escalates

 Sydney’s streets have erupted in violence with the race to re-supply the nation’s largest drug market sparking bloody gangland battles and among teenage groups fighting for ‘territory’ in their post codes.

Bodies have been piling up in the Harbour City in the past 18 months, with 13 contract killings linked to the bitter feud between the Hamzy and Alameddine crime clans.

The highly-planned hits – which have sometimes involved using secret tracking devices attached to cars – have been so precisely executed that investigators are mostly powerless to stop the war from escalating.

Terrified witnesses are are often too scared to speak over fears of retaliation, making it nearly impossible to prosecute the perpetuators.

Police in New South Wales are so overwhelmed that Assistant Commissioner Stuart Smith told cabinet ministers and senior public servants in a secret briefing ‘we’re [police] swinging a pool noodle and they’ve [crime bosses] got guns’, Sydney Morning Herald reported.

In a desperate move to quell the violence, state police are teaming up with the Australian Federal Police and intelligence agencies in a new ‘super taskforce’ dubbed Erebus. 

Meanwhile, postcode gangs operating at the bottom of the criminal pyramid in the rugged streets of western Sydney may be lacking the same level of criminal sophistication, but their crimes are equally as ruthless, with several fatal stabbings and bashings connected to the neighbourhood beefs.

The gangs flaunt their status online by posting images of themselves with weapons, designer clothes and expensive jewellery.

Postcode gangs operating at the bottom of the criminal pyramid have been at war for control of the street 

Postcode feuds are thought to have been the reason for several fatal stabbings and bashings in recent years

‘During the pandemic lockdowns, many people lost contact with their drug suppliers on the street level,’ organised crime and dark networks expert Professor Mark Lauchs told Daily Mail Australia.

‘I would say that has caused a lot of built-up tension, and the rush to get back in business and create new illicit opportunities may be part of the reason for this run of violence.’

Wastewater testing by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission in August 2021 – a time when much of New South Wales was under lockdown – found use of heroin and meth decreased significantly while cocaine consumption fell to its lowest levels on record.

Now that international borders have reopened along with pubs and nightclubs, international drug cartels are trying desperately to fill the void.

This was tragically highlighted by the death of a suspected drug smuggler who was found floating in the Port of Newcastle.

Organised crime detectives believe the South American wearing technical dive gear was trying to bring ashore about $20million haul of cocaine attached to the hull of a Panama-flagged cargo ship.

A man has been arrested in connection with the death of a diver who was trying to recover $20 million of cocaine from the hull of a ship in Newcastle   

Police divers are pictured in a recovery operation after a diver was found dead close to a massive cocaine haul

Australia’s largest coal port, along with neighbouring Lake Macquarie, has long been a beacon for international drug importers, with the nation’s most lucrative market for illicit substances – Sydney – just a two-hour drive south.

The route is often referred to among seasoned organised crime detectives as Australia’s drug ‘superhighway’.

But the NSW Police and the AFP admit it’s one of many locations on Australia’s east coast currently being targeted by international drug syndicates.

Once the product makes it ashore, it’s distributed among organised crime groups who divvy it up and offload it among lower-level dealers who in turn sell the drugs to runners below them.

Assistant Commissioner Smith said in his high-level briefing that incoming drug cargo is ‘put out to auction and sold to the highest bidder’ with the illicit packages delivered via an entrenched corrupt ‘transport network’.

Once in the hands of larger players, drugs like cocaine are often sold down dozens of times before reaching recreational users.

With a wave of newly imported narcotics recently flooding the market, experts say it’s left a lot of room for competition at all levels of the drug business.