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World News | Spanish Police Refloat Homemade Drug Semi-submersible

Get latest articles and stories on World at LatestLY. Civil Guard police in northwestern Spain on Tuesday refloated a homemade semi-submersible vessel they suspect may have been used to transport cocaine.

World News | Spanish Police Refloat Homemade Drug Semi-submersible
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Madrid, Mar 14 (AP) Civil Guard police in northwestern Spain on Tuesday refloated a homemade semi-submersible vessel they suspect may have been used to transport cocaine.

The 16-metre (52-foot) fiberglass vessel was spotted Monday sunk a kilometer (a half-mile) off the coast in the Arousa estuary.

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It will be towed to a nearby port where police will investigate its contents.

Police said it was too early to say whether it had been used to transport cocaine or where it came from.

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A similar vessel with three metric tonnes of cocaine on board was found in another northern Spanish estuary in 2019.

In 2021, Spanish police seized a homemade narco-semisubmersible able to carry up to two metric tonnes (2.2 tonnes) of cargo while it was being built in Malaga, on southern Spain's Costa del Sol.

Similar drug-smuggling crafts have been discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, especially off Central and South America.

They aren't so common in Europe.

The vessels lie low in the water to escape detection and rarely are able to fully submerge. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)