Spain: record cocaine shipment seized from banana container

MADRID – Spain's Interior Ministry says police has found nearly 9 tons of cocaine concealed in a banana shipment from Colombia, a European record for drugs found inside a shipping container.

Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido says six people have been arrested, four of them in Spain and two in the French city of Lyon, after police and customs officials seized the 8.74-ton cocaine stash aboard a cargo ship that docked last Sunday in the southern Spanish port of Algeciras.

With 101 million tons of shipments handled in 2017, Algeciras is Spain's busiest cargo port and a main entry for cocaine into Europe. In January, authorities seized six tons of cocaine there.

Zoido vowed Wednesday to fight traffickers and "to keep drugs out of the streets."