Kenyan officials have seized more than 1,600 pieces of illegal ivory in the past week weighing almost five tonnes and hidden inside sesame seed sacks destined for Turkey, wildlife officials said.
Poaching has surged across sub-Saharan Africa, where armed criminal gangs are slaughtering elephants to feed Asia's demand for ivory and rhinos horns which are ground into powder for use in Asian medicines.
``The ivory came through the Kenya-Uganda border stashed in sacks, and they were hidden in two 40-foot containers,’’ Arthur Tuda, Kenya Wildlife Service's (KWS) officer in charge of the Coast region, told reporters late on Tuesday.
``Export documents declared the containers as carrying sesame seeds.’’
The ivory which was found in two separate seizures is valued at 1.14 million dollars. It is the largest weekly haul in the
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