Italian authorities have seized a record 5.3 tonne cocaine haul being transferred between ships off the southern coast of Sicily, police said on Friday.
The consignment had an estimated value of 850 million euros and five people have been arrested, the Guardia di Finanza said in a statement.
Police had been tracking a ship that sailed from South America and swooped in the early hours of Wednesday, when a surveillance aircraft spotted packages being thrown from its deck into the waters of the Strait of Sicily to be collected by a waiting fishing trawler. They stopped the trawler and found large quantities of drugs in a hidden compartment behind some panelling on the vessel. Two Tunisians, an Italian, an Albanian and a French national were arrested."Drugs are a scourge of our society fuelled by unscrupulous men who sow death by crushing hopes and destroying many families," he said in a statement.floating at sea off eastern Sicily which they believe had been left by a cargo ship for collection.
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