TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras:July 3 (Xinhua) — A pilot was killed and his copilot injured when their light plane overloaded with 600 kilos of cocaine crashed in the eastern Honduran province of Olancho, police spokesman Hector Ivan Mejia said.
Mejia said the aircraft bearing a Colombian flag was being pursued at the time by investigators from the Honduran Special Investigations Direction and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and that may have caused the crash.
After the accident early Tuesday morning, authorities discovered that the aircraft was carrying 20 packages containing about 600 kilograms of cocaine. The pilot died in the crash and his injured copilot was been taken to a nearby hospital, according to Mejia. The names of the victims were not released.
In the past few weeks, Honduran police have seized more than 1, 500 kilograms of cocaine in conjunction with DEA agents in the Caribbean and eastern regions of Honduras. From January to October 2011, Honduran authorities seized 11.6 tons of illicit drugs worth about 550 million U.S. dollars. (Xinhua)
