Senegal investigates foreigners after drugs find

DAKAR, July 6 (Reuters) Police in Senegal handed six foreigners and a Senegalese woman to a public prosecutor after seizing cocaine worth more than 200 million dollars, the largest drugs haul in the West African country.

Police discovered 2,454 kg of cocaine last week after a deserted sailing ship drifted into a coastal resort with 50 sacks of drugs on board, underlining fears the region has become a major hub for trafficking from Latin America into Europe.

''We've handed over two Colombians yesterday, an Ecuadorean, a Venezuelan, a French man and a French woman, and a Senegalese woman,'' Captain Adama Gueye of the paramilitary police said.

The group -- some of whom were arrested in the Atlantic resort of Saly, popular with European tourists, and others in the Sine Saloum delta of lush mangrove swamps and islets -- had been handed to the public prosecutor in Thies, east of Dakar.

''It is now up to the prosecutor to establish after his own investigations who will be charged,'' Gueye told Reuters.

Latin American drug cartels have increasingly been moving their logistics bases to West Africa, lured by lax policing in an unstable region and by the presence of small, underground criminal networks already in place, security experts say.

REUTERS GT BST1915