The Senegalese army seized almost three tons of cocaine from a ship that boarded off the coast of Senegal with a crew of 10, including a Senegalese, AFP learned from the navy on Tuesday.
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A patrol boat “seized nearly 3 tons of pure cocaine on board a vessel intercepted 150 km off the coast of Dakar,” the Navy announced on X (formerly Twitter). The seized shipment contained 2,975 tons of cocaine, a senior Senegalese military official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The ship was intercepted on the night of Sunday to Monday, the Senegalese army said in an earlier press release sent to AFP on Tuesday. He was then escorted to a naval base in Dakar, where he arrived on Tuesday for “identification and counting of seized products.”
The ship’s crew includes a Senegalese man and “the investigation is ongoing,” a navy official told AFP, who did not give the nationality of the other people who were on board the boat or his origins.
The ship was intercepted “in international waters,” he added.
According to the United Nations Office against Drug Abuse (UNODC), West and Central Africa, long considered an easy transit zone for Latin American-made drugs heading to Europe, has now also become a high-consumption region.
More than 800 kg of cocaine were seized by the Senegalese navy from a ship off the coast of Dakar in January.
Senegalese customs also announced in October 2022 the seizure of 300 kg of cocaine worth almost 37 million euros in a refrigerated truck from neighboring Mali.