(ANSA) - Italian drug dealers have added coffins to the range of unusual containers for their wares.
A major police operation on Monday busted a Mafia gang sending cocaine and heroin from a drug-ridden Palermo district to pushers all over the country.
"On at least one occasion the gang has used coffins to shift its goods," police said. Some of the coffins weighed more than 150Kg.
"The caskets were empty, apart from the drugs."
The discovery increased the list of ingenious solutions Italian gangs have come up with to elude police operations. In Naples, pushers were last summer found to be hiding products in bags of sweets and using armies of under-age delivery boys and girls.
Farther north in Pescara, police found that a nursery school was being used to store drugs.
In Rome, pushers have moved drugs in newborn babies' shoes. To foil sniffer dogs, traffickers have brought drugs into the country in shipments of soap and perfume.
Last year a major drugs shipment was found to have been drilled into huge blocks of marble.
Drugs have also been hidden in batches of gloves, suits, dresses, underwear and other items.
Inside Italy, gangs have put bags of drugs inside the petrol tanks of trucks and the toilets of coaches. Drugs have even been found in the stomachs of cows and other animals.
