Crackdown on drug criminals

HUNDREDS of US drug agents and Puerto Rican police swept through housing projects on Puerto Rico's west coast yesterday in the largest operation of its kind in the American territory.

Authorities planned to arrest about 170 people and seize over $1 million in property in a bid to hobble drug trafficking gangs and cut crime in Mayaguez during the coming Central American and Caribbean Games.

The Drug Enforcement Administration brought agents from throughout the Caribbean to assist some 500 Puerto Rican police officers in making the arrests and executing search warrants in a coastal area known as an entry point for cocaine and other drugs from the Dominican Republic, across the Mona Passage.