Rennes (France): Authorities have closed beaches in southwest France as packages of cocaine mysteriously have been washing up along the country’s Atlantic coast, with more than 1,000 kilograms discovered since mid-October, a prosecutor said here Wednesday.
The packages are now being found further north, with a five-kilo parcel turning up Tuesday at Camaret-sur-Mer on the western tip of Brittany, public prosecutor of this city Philippe Astruc told this agency.
“It’s the same cargo,” Astruc said. “We’re going to still be finding them for a while. Each tide brings in a batch. They are still fairly significant with around 100 kilos arriving each day all along the coast,” added the prosecutor.
Customs officers are also finding some of the packages at sea, informed Astruc.
Officials in Rennes are coordinating the searches for the packages, which have appeared on hundreds of kilometres of coastline all the way south to the posh resort town of Biarritz.
Around 100 investigators are working with European counterparts as well as the US Drug Enforcement Agency to try to figure out why the drugs have been washing ashore almost daily.
The cocaine is extremely pure at some 83 percent and therefore highly dangerous, Astruc said, urging people not to touch the packages and to alert the police.
That has not stopped some from trying to get their hands on the drugs, whose street value would be in the millions of euros, prompting police to close some beaches and start carrying out patrols.
“We fear that people will try and find these products and use them – which is incredibly dangerous – and that traffickers or would-be traffickers will say ‘we can make some money here’,” Astruc informed.
A 17-year-old was caught Monday with five kilos of cocaine at Lacanau, a closed-off surfing beach near the southwestern city of Bordeaux – he had come from Toulouse, a three-hour drive away after hearing news about the flow of cocaine.
A half-dozen other beaches in the area have been closed as well, with police stopping walkers for searches and also checking cars leaving nearby parking lots.
A woman who gave her name as Martine failed to notice the closure signs at the Porge beach, Tuesday, when officers told her and a friend to leave.
“When we turned around we saw a package next to the water,” she said, saying they alerted the police, who estimated it weighed some four kilos before sealing it in a plastic bag.
Astruc said 1,010 kilos (nearly 2,230 pounds) have been recovered so far, a sharp jump from just two days ago, when 763 kilos were reported.
Agencies