More than a tonne of heroin, with a street value of around BD86 million ($226 million), was confiscated during a joint operation by the British and Australian navies operating under the banner of the Bahrain-based Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) - a multinational partnership involving 30 countries.

The class A drug was discovered on April 25 aboard a dhow in the Indian Ocean, 30 miles off the east coast of Africa in Tanzania, according to a report in the Gulf Daily News, our sister publication.

The Australian navy warship HMAS Darwin crew, operating under the command of Bahrain-based Royal Navy Commodore Jeremy Blunden and the Combined Task Force 150 (CTF-150), team, seized 1,032kg of the drug.

"This is the sixth seizure of heroin since January and is by far the largest ever made by the organisation," Commodore Blunden told the Royal Navy official newspaper Navy News.

"It represents a significant blow to the drug smuggling networks. We know that heroin trafficked into East Africa reaches the shores of the UK and Europe which makes the success particularly satisfying for the UK officers and sailors serving in the task force."

Commodore Blunder, who was commanding the HMAS Darwin, said it was a tough task to locate the dhow in 2.4 million square miles of ocean.

He said once they discovered the vessel, the Australian Navy boarded the dhow and worked in difficult conditions to find the drugs hidden in a cargo of cement.

The confiscated heroin has been destroyed. Drug trafficking networks regularly transport drugs across the Indian Ocean in the hope of evading detection to fund terror groups such as Al Qaeda. – TradeArabia News Service