Ecuador makes drug bust at sea, biggest in decade

QUITO, Ecuador - Ecuadorean police and the US Coast Guard have intercepted a boat carrying approximately US$175 million ($254.76 million) worth of US-bound Colombian cocaine in the Pacific Ocean in Ecuador's biggest drug bust in a decade, police said on Monday.

The fishing boat "Daniel" was stopped 370km south of the Galapagos Islands and its crew of eight Ecuadoreans arrested, police said, without saying exactly when the operation took place.

The fishing boat had been loaded with seven tonnes of cocaine supplied by fast launches off the Colombian coast and was sailing to a rendezvous with a ship which would carry the drugs to the United States.

Ecuador is a major transit country for cocaine from Colombia, where illegal armed groups fighting in a four-decade-old war rely on selling the drug to buy weapons.

- REUTERS