PHNOM PENH, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- The anti-drug campaign, which was launched more than a year ago, had led to a sharp increase in the numbers of prison inmates in Cambodia last year, according to a government report on Tuesday.

The report, released by the General Department of Prisons during its annual meeting, showed that the country had 28,414 people behind bars in 2017, up 29 percent from 21,989 inmates in 2016.

It said that 51.7 percent, or 14,707 of the inmates, were imprisoned for drug offences, 18.8 percent for aggravated robberies, 8 percent for murder, 7.7 percent for rape, and 13.7 percent for other offences.

Chan Kim Seng, director general of the General Department of Prisons, said the swollen prison population had caused a number of challenges including overcrowding, high risks to prison security, sanitation, and healthcare.

"For the inmates in drug offences, they have been kept in separate cells in order to ensure security, safety and order in the prisons and to prevent the imports of drugs from distributing and using in the prisons," he said in the report.

The Southeast Asian country launched an anti-drug campaign on Jan. 1, 2017.

In the entirety of 2017, the authorities arrested about 9,660 suspected drug traffickers and 8,200 suspected drug addicts, according to an Interior Ministry's anti-drug department report.

Cambodia has no death sentence for drug traffickers. Under its law, a person trafficking more than 80 grams of illicit drug will be jailed for life.