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Mali seizes 750 kg cocaine
04/01/2008 09:17 - (SA)
Bamako - Malian customs officers seized
three quarters of a tonne of cocaine worth an estimated $45m after a desert shootout with heavily armed smugglers
near the Algerian border, officials said on Thursday.
West Africa has become a major trafficking route for
Colombian cocaine headed for the lucrative streets of Europe,
and smuggling gangs ply their trade across thinly-policed
borders at the heart of Africa's biggest desert.
The drugs were discovered on board two four-wheel-drive
vehicles near the town of Tin-Zaouatene on the Mali-Algeria
border, said a senior Territorial Administration Ministry
official.
"The seizure took place ... following a car chase and gun
fight, or a battle, you could say, as they had military
weapons," he said.
"After two hours of fighting, the smugglers, who were
driving three Algerian-registered off-roaders, abandoned two of
them, loaded their wounded into the third vehicle and fled over
the border," he said.
Transit points for illicit cargoes
Malian authorities estimated the cocaine, one of the
country's biggest ever seizures, to be worth 20 billion CFA
francs ($45m) he said.
Trafficking of drugs, weapons and people via ancient trade
routes has increased insecurity in the remote central Sahara, as
well as in some of West Africa's coastal states which act as
transit points for the illicit cargoes.
UN officials say the tiny, deeply impoverished state of
Guinea-Bissau risks becoming a "narco-state" unless the
international community helps its poorly equipped police force
take on wealthy and heavily-armed Latin American drugs gangs.
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