Authorities have announced the largest cocaine shipment seizure of the year in the Caribbean Sea off Colombia after military ships and planes chased down a speedboat holding almost four tons of the drug.
In a joint operation between the Colombian Navy, the Colombian Air Force and the Joint Interagency Task Force of the United States Southern Command, authorities seized the cocaine — said to be worth more than $113 million — from the vessel near San Andrés Isla, according to the Colombian Navy.
The navy released dramatic aerial video of the chase, during which it said the crew of the suspicious vessel “began evasive actions, throwing packages into the water.”
After a chase that spanned several miles, the boat — which was covering its cargo in a blue tarp — was finally intercepted, the officials said.
Three Colombians, one Honduran and one Venezuelan who had been on board the speedboat were detained, and subsequent testing confirmed that the boat had been carrying 3,355 kilograms of cocaine weighing, or about 3.7 tons of the drug.
Navy video showed officers offloading and arranging hundreds of packages of the seized cocaine, which officials said amounted to more than eight million doses that would “not reach the streets of different countries, thus avoiding the impact on public health.”
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