Two pilots detained as they awaited a shipment of cocaine from Venezuela are employees of Mexico’s federal water commission, local media quoted officials as saying today.

Mexican soldiers seized five-and-a-half tons of cocaine worth more than US$100m (€82.8m) from a commercial plane arriving from Venezuela.

More than a dozen Mexican policemen have been arrested following the killings of at least 11 people, whose bodies were found buried in the garden of a drug gang’s safe house.