Customs officials in Thailand have seized 3 tons of ivory hidden in tea leaf sacks from Kenya in the second-biggest bust in the country's history.
The 511 elephant tusks worth $6 million (£3.9m) were bound for Laos, but were seized upon arrival at a major port in Chonburi province on Saturday.
It comes one week after the country's biggest seizure of 4 tons of tusks that were smuggled from Congo and also destined for Laos.
Customs Department Director-General Somchai Sujjapongse said the ivory was shipped out of Kenya on March 24 and went through ports in Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore before coming to Thailand.
After these two consecutive big busts ... the transnational crime networks must realise it is getting increasingly difficult to send their shipment past Thailand, but I think they will try to come up with the more complicated means, so we will have already prepared the measures to tackle the issue.
Poachers have killed tens of thousands of African elephants for their tusks in recent years to meet an increasing demand for ivory in Asia.
China has imposed a one-year ban on imports amid criticism that the demand for ivory threatens the existence of Africa's elephants.
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