Two people have been arrested and a "significant" amount of performance-enhancing steroids and other drugs was seized, police in the northern Italian city of Trieste said in a statement on Saturday. Another eight people are being investigated.

The police said they had noticed strange movements at the post office, with hundreds of packages being sent to U.S. soldiers in Iraq and many of them being returned for reasons of "military security".

They uncovered a ring based in Trieste that allegedly sold steroids like nandrolone via the Internet, sending them to buyers across Europe, Australia, the United States and Canada.