Mexican authorities on Monday seized over 105 tonnes of marijuana in the border town of Tijuana after a clash with drug traffickers, in the largest such seizure in recent years, the military said.
Over 10,000 packages of marijuana were seized, weighing in at some 105 tonnes, and 11 people were arrested in the operation, General Alfonso Duarte told reporters.
The drugs had a value of around 335 million dollars on the Mexican street, but their worth could double or triple if sold in the United States, where the traffickers had been attempting to enter, Duarte said.
It is the largest seizure in years amid an increasingly brutal war on drug cartels that has seen some 28,000 deaths since President Felipe Calderon launched a crackdown in 2006 with the deployment of 50,000 troops.
Mexico's border regions, especially the major towns directly on the US frontier, have witnessed the brunt of the conflict with notable spikes in particularly gruesome violence in Tijuana -- neighboring California -- and Ciudad Juarez, which borders Texas further to the east.