Major smuggling tunnel found under US-Mexico border

US and Mexican authorities locate a sophisticated smuggling tunnel running under the border between Tijuana and San Diego

A sophisticated smuggling tunnel equipped with a rail system, lighting and ventilation has been discovered running under the US-Mexico border between Tijuana and San Diego, authorities in the two countries said.

Four tonnes of marijuana had so far been recovered from a building near the tunnel's entrance close to Tijuana's airport, Mexican officials told daily newspaper El Universal.

The tunnel stretched for 150 metres under the border at a depth of 20 metres, police said. It was unclear on Thursday to which drug gang the tunnel belonged, but a number of previously discovered passages have been operated by the Sinaloa Cartel.

The country's largest and most powerful drug gang, the Sinaloa Cartel controls huge swaths of territory along the US border. It operates a thriving trafficking trade which in recent years earned its notorious kingpin, Joaquin "El Chapo (Shorty) Guzman, a spot on the Forbes list of the world's richest people, with a fortune of an estimated $1 billion in 2012.

Mexico's cartels have had to come up with increasingly inventive smuggling methods in the face of a nationwide security offensive launched by former president Felipe Calderon in 2006. The crackdown has unleashed a bloody drug war in which an estimated 70,000 people have died, many of them in border areas.

As security forces turn up the heat, drug gangs have increasingly engaged in brutal battles for territorial control, with the Sinaloa Cartel finally asserting its dominance in a number of key smuggling routes in the north of the country.
Authorities in Mexico said that the tunnel was found by members of the Mexican army working with local police. They had then informed the US Drug Enforcement Agency, which located the exit of the underground passage across the border in San Diego.
The passage was recently completed, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement.
More than 100 "narcotunnels" have been discovered along the US-Mexico border since 2005, according to the US Department of Homeland Security.