(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-01-28 11:14

BOGOTA - Colombian authorities said on Sunday that they had seized a ton of cocaine and 36 kg of heroin in northern Colombia's La Guajira province.

The seizure took place on Saturday in Palomino, a rural area 900 km north of the nation's capital, Bogota.

A speedboat was found to take the drugs to a fishing boat bound for Central America and to the United States. The speedboat and three cars were also seized during the operation, but the traffickers escaped, said General Alvaro Caro, head of the nation's anti-drug police.

The seized drugs, which had an estimated value of 20 million U.S. dollars on the international black market, appeared to belong to "Los Nevados," a drug trafficking organization linked to the nation's paramilitaries, he said.

"Los Nevados" was run by brothers Miguel Angel and Victor Manuel Mejia Munera, known as "Los Mellizos" (The Twins).

The two had confessed to being senior figures of the paramilitary group,the Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), hoping to to get their sentences reduced under the peace agreement between the government and the AUC.

The Colombian government and the AUC held peace talks from 2003 to 2006, resulting in the demobilization of the AUC's 31,000 fighters. Fighters who confessed to their crimes were subject to a sentence cap of eight years.