Police seize record cocaine haul in Italy worth more than £730 million

Authorities have made the biggest cocaine bust ever found on Italian territory off the southern coast of Sicily.

Guardia di Finanza border police said in a statement that the force began monitoring a suspicious “mother” ship that was maintaining a position just outside Italian territorial waters in the Straits of Sicily.

Early on Wednesday, police captured images of numerous parcels on the deck of the ship, which were then dropped into the sea to be collected by a waiting fishing boat.

The Italian border police seized the fishing boat and found a total of 5.3 tons of cocaine, worth around €850 million (£735 million).