QUITO – The Ecuadorian navy seized 1.9 tons of drugs in an operation conducted over the past few days near the Galapagos Islands, but no suspects were arrested, prosecutors said.
The navy conducted the anti-drug operation on Thursday and Friday about 200 nautical miles from San Cristobal, in the Galapagos, the Attorney General’s Office said in a Twitter post.
The AG’s office, however, did not provide details on the types of drugs seized.
The drugs handed over to the AG’s office were found floating in the sea in sealed bales, prosecutors said.
“The bales had buoys with a satellite tracking system and the drugs, presumably, were bound for Central America,” the AG’s office said.
AG’s office personnel and drug enforcement agents put the drugs in safekeeping.
The Galapagos Islands are located about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) west of the coast of continental Ecuador and were declared a World Natural Heritage Site in 1978.
Some 95 percent of the territory’s 8,000 sq. kilometers (a little over 3,000 sq. miles) constitutes a protected area that is home to more than 50 species of animals and birds found nowhere else on the planet.
The islands were made famous by 19th-century British naturalist Charles Darwin, whose observations of life on the islands contributed greatly to his theory of the evolution of species.
MEXICO CITY – A woman has been taken into custody as a suspect in the deaths of her three young daughters, who were found murdered at their home in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, state prosecutors said.