Honduras authorities, working with U.S. help, recovered a record-breaking 6.6 tons of cocaine from a semi-submersible vessel intercepted in the Caribbean Sea close to the border with Nicaragua.
The drug load, worth $180 million, is the largest ever recovered in the Central American country.
Honduras' military intercepted the vessel two weeks previously off the country's Mosquito Coast. They captured the crew, made up of one Colombian and four Honduran nationals, who managed to sink the vessel before the whole cargo could be seized.
The scuttled sub was located some days later, 36 meters under the sea. U.S. help was called in, as Honduras authorities said they lacked the technology to bring it to the surface themselves.
The vessel is thought to have come from Colombia, where in 2010 the military found the country's first fully-submersible drug-trafficking submarine, built in a jungle laboratory by criminal gangs.
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