PERU BREAKS UP DRUG TRAFFICKING RING

LIMA, Peru - Peruvian police said Monday they had broken up a major drug
trafficking ring, seizing almost two tons of cocaine destined for the
United States or Europe and arresting 27 people.

The gang was linked to Mexico's Tijuana cartel and had set up a fishing
company in the Peruvian port of Chimbote as a front to smuggle the drugs to
Mexico by sea and then on to Europe or the United States, Edy Tomasto, head
of Peru's anti-drug police, told reporters.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's Lima office helped with a
three-month surveillance operation leading up to the bust, a police
statement said.

Tomasto said police seized 3,870 pounds of refined cocaine in Chimbote,
about 210 miles northwest of Lima, in the largest cocaine seizure in Peru
so far this year.

He identified Miguel Morales, a Mexican, as the ring's leader. Morales, 10
Colombians, 15 Peruvians and a Guatemalan were arrested in a series of
raids in Chimbote, Lima, the northern coastal city of Trujillo and the
central mountain city of Ayacucho. The arrests were made from Thursday to
Saturday.

As he spoke, police officers unveiled several hundred packages of the
confiscated cocaine wrapped tightly in brown packing tape and stored in sacks.

The cocaine was to be ferried on small boats from Chimbote to a larger ship
off Peru's coast, Tomasto said. The larger ship was still at large.

Police also uncovered a processing laboratory in the Apurimac River valley,
the region in Peru's eastern Amazon jungle where most of the raw coca leaf
for the cocaine originated, Tomasto said.