El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele announced yesterday Friday the seizure of 6.3 tons of cocaine and the arrest of 17 suspected drug traffickers in four operations by his country’s navy in the Pacific Ocean.

The operations, which Bukele described as “unprecedented”, were conducted between June 2 and 10, some 1,000 nautical miles off the country’s coast. Five vessels were arrested and subjected to inspections. In four of them, drugs were found whose value is estimated at $157.4 million, according to a post by the president of El Salvador on his platform X.

Three Mexicans, one Colombian, three Guatemalans and ten Ecuadorian nationals were arrested, according to Boukele, who called it “one of the biggest blows to drug trafficking in the history of El Salvador.”

El Salvador and other Central American countries are on the route taken by drug trafficking rings from countries such as Colombia, Peru and Ecuador to the North American market. A total of 27.2 tons of drugs, mostly cocaine, with an estimated value of $681.1 million, were seized in 2024 in El Salvador, according to official figures.