German shop worker finds cocaine instead of bananas

MUNICH, Apr 10 (Reuters) A supermarket worker's discovery of 20 kilograms (44 lb) of cocaine hidden in a case of fruit had German police going bananas.

A spokesman for Bavarian state police said officers dug through 4,600 cartons of bananas after a man working at a Munich grocery store found the drugs in a shipment of fruit from Colombia.

''A worker unloading a case saw that there weren't any bananas under the first layer,'' a spokesman for Bavarian state police said today. In their place, he said was 20 kilograms of drugs.

Around 30 police officers were set to search through the remainder of the shipment but found no more suspicious packages.

The bananas originally came from Colombia and were shipped through the Belgian port of Antwerp before being trucked into Germany. The investigation is under way.

REUTERS SRS HS2242