Huge U.S.-Mexico drugs tunnel discovered in San Diego

PanARMENIAN.Net - One of the longest cross-border drugs-smuggling tunnels between Mexico and the U.S. has been found by authorities in San Diego, American officials say, according to BBC News.

They say the 800m (874 yards) tunnel was used to transport an "unprecedented cache" of cocaine and marijuana.

It was the 13th sophisticated secret tunnel found along California's border with Mexico since 2006. But a local official described it as "ingenious" and unlike anything seen before.

Three have been found on the same short street in San Diego that runs parallel to a border fence with Mexico.

In the latest incident about 1,016kg (2,242lb) of cocaine and 6,350kg of marijuana suspected of being transported through the tunnel was seized, officials say.

In March, authorities uncovered a 380m tunnel that ran from a restaurant in Mexico to a house in California.

The latest tunnel ran at a depth of 14m (46ft) from the bottom of an elevator shaft built into a house in Tijuana to a hole in the ground on the American side enclosed within a fenced-in lot set up as a pallet business.

The hole was hidden under a trailer-sized rubbish bin that smugglers used to move the drugs from the lot, federal officials said.

Federal agents followed a truck that took the bin to a central San Diego location about 40km (25 miles) north of the border and witnessed the cargo being loaded onto a box truck, which drove away.

San Diego County sheriff's deputies then stopped the truck and seized the drugs, arresting three men in the process.

The tunnel used in the operation was sophisticated, The Los Angeles Times reported, and had a ventilation system and lighting. On the Tijuana side, the tunnel was connected to an elevator that ascended into the house.