Ecuador’s National Police seized 2.5 tons of cocaine in Manabi Province during an operation earlier this week, the State Attorney General said Wednesday.
Part of the Manabi Province drug bust.
The drugs were hidden in “bags of jute on a farm located in the community of Piquigua in the district of Sucre, in Manabi Province,” the agency said on its Twitter account. According to authorities, the seizure was the largest in Manabi history.
The investigation is on-going and arrests are pending, they said.
Ecuadorian Police said via Twitter that in the next few hours it would provide more information on the cocaine seizure. The drugs were destined for “international trafficking.”
So far in 2018, the Anti-narcotics Police has seized more than 60 tons of drugs, mainly cocaine, according to official data. In the same period, Ecuador’s navy and coast guard have seized an additional 135 tons of illegal drugs destined for Central and North America.
The seizures amount to the largest in Ecuador’s history, the attorney general says. He credits the high capture rate to increased efforts to keep drugs out of the country.
