French navy seizes 2.4 tonnes of cocaine from fishing boat

The French navy has seized 2.4 tonnes of cocaine from a Venezuelan fishing boat in the Atlantic, authorities said Monday.

Acting on a tipoff from the customs department, a helicopter from the frigate Ventose landed a team on the fishing boat about 1,500 kilometres northeast of the Caribbean island of Martinique, France's Caribbean Armed Services department said.

The boat, the crew and the cocaine were handed over to Venezuelan authorities, the department said in a Facebook post.

The military department said it had now seized more than 12 tonnes of narcotics this year. The Caribbean is taking on growing importance in the trafficking of cocaine from South America to Europe and North America.

The 22.7 tonnes of cocaine intercepted in the region in 2022 was more than five times the figure of a decade earlier.