By DPA,
Hanoi : Vietnamese customs inspectors have discovered more than two tonnes of elephant tusks hidden in a shipping container full of snail shells from Kenya, an official said Monday.
Bui Hoang Duong, head of the customs inspection department at the northern port of Haiphong, said inspectors opened the container Friday as part of enhanced scrutiny of shipping from Tanzania, due to recent cases of ivory smuggling.
The container’s waybill said it had been loaded by a Vietnamese carrier, Vinashin Mariner, in the Tanzanian port of Zanjiba.
The elephant tusks were cut into three to four pieces and hidden in the middle of thousands of packages of snail shells. A total of 326 pieces of ivory were found in the container.
Several cases of smuggled elephant tusks have been reported in Vietnam this year.
In March, Haiphong customs inspectors found more than six tonnes of elephant tusks in a container shipped from Tanzania.
Last Thursday, police in the central province of Thanh Hoa seized nearly 100 kg of elephant tusks hidden in the boot and chassis of a car headed for Hanoi.
Dao Thi Ngoc Van, a trafficking expert at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Hanoi, said most elephant ivory smuggled into Vietnam was ultimately destined for China.
A report issued by WWF in 2008 found ivory prices ranged from $770 to $1,200 per kg on the Vietnamese black market.