Nautical Drug Bust
Authorities seized more than three tonnes of cocaine and arrested 11 people off Portugal’s Atlantic coast, dismantling a drug smuggling gang that operated across international waters from a cargo vessel, police said on Friday.
The seizure of the 3.3 tonnes of cocaine – thought to be worth around $148 million at European street prices – took place at sea when security forces boarded the smuggling ship 150 nautical miles off the coast.
The investigation into the gang, which started in 2017, was led by Spanish authorities.
The seizure took place as the ship was traveling from South America.
Of the 11 arrested, eight were from the Ukraine, one from Georgia, one from the Netherlands and one French.
Authorities found 80 bales of pure cocaine all of them equipped with hooks to facilitate transfer to smaller boats.
Wild Fires
Regional authorities in northern Spain are battling around 50 fires, some of which were deliberately set.
By late yesterday 48 fires were still active, a statement from the government of the Cantabria region said.
760 people from different administrations were working to put them out,” the statement said.
Since the first fires broke out on Thursday in the mountainous region, no people have been injured and “most of the fires took place in inaccessible areas and have not put the population or infrastructure in danger,” the government added.
Two people have been arrested and only five people have been evacuated” from the area.
Priest Killed
A Spanish priest and four customs officers were killed during attacks by alleged jihadists in Burkina Faso, which is struggling with an Islamist insurgency.
Antonio Cesar Fernandez was assassinated during a jihadist attack.
Fernandez and two others were attacked by gunmen after crossing the border between Togo and Burkina Faso”.
A security source said that a mobile customs unit was also the target of a terrorist attack on Friday.
More than 300 people have been killed in the country in four years.
Naval Spat
A Spanish warship with its guns manned tried to order commercial vessels to leave Gibraltars waters yesterday.
The warship’s crew can be heard in an audio recording of a radio exchange telling vessels anchored at the Rock to ‘leave Spanish territorial waters’.
Royal Navy boats were deployed and confronted the ship, which then sailed along the Gibraltar coast ‘with its weapons uncovered and manned’.
Boats which were ordered to leave remained at the port during the incident, which was branded ‘foolish’ by a spokesman for Her Majesty’s Government of Gibraltar.
It comes weeks after Britain’s Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson suggested in a meeting with top brass, that UK forces should pelt Spanish war ships with paintballs in a bid to humiliate them.
He made the suggestion off the back of a huge upsurge in Spanish vessels entering British waters off the Rock.
The illegal incursions by Spanish vessels stands at two a day.