US officials in Philadelphia busted 16 tons of cocaine worth more than $1 billion

• More than 16 tons of cocaine was seized in Philadelphia on Tuesday in what authorities called one of the largest busts in US history.
• The drugs were found on a cargo ship that had sailed from South America and was bound for Europe.
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PHILADELPHIA (AP) — US authorities have seized more than $1 billion worth of cocaine from a ship at a Philadelphia port, calling it one of the largest drug busts in American history.

The US attorney's office in Philadelphia announced the massive bust on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon. Officials said agents seized about 16.5 tons (15 metric tons) of cocaine from a large ship at the Packer Marine Terminal in South Philadelphia.

US Attorney William McSwain said in a tweet that so much cocaine "could kill millions — MILLIONS — of people."McSwain's office said the bust was "the largest drug seizure in the history of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania."

The drug seizure is the latest in a series of large cocaine busts along the East Coast. The drugs were found aboard the cargo ship MSC Gayane, which had previously stopped in Chile, Panama, and the Bahamas.

Officials are still trying to determine if the illicit cargo was loaded onto the ship in the Bahamas or while it was on the way to Philadelphia, according to NBC Philadelphia.

After the US, the ship was scheduled to visit ports in Europe, including in France and the Netherlands. Large-volume trafficking through major European ports using shipping containers has grown considerably, rising sixfold between 2006 and 2016.

While the seizure in Philadelphia appears to be one of the largest single busts in US history, similar amounts of have been hauled in by US authorities, particularly the US Coast Guard, which patrols smuggling routes in the Caribbean and Pacific.

The Coast Guard and its partners pulled 11,000 pounds of cocaine off a freighter in the Pacific in 2015. In 2017, one Coast Guard cutter offloaded 16 tons seized by it and other cutters in 17 busts in the Pacific. The Coast Guard cutter James offloaded 19 tons of the drug in Florida in November — 19,000 pounds of which the James itself captured.

Authorities say members of the ship's crew have been arrested and charged.

SEE ALSO: Billions of dollars of cocaine are smuggled into the US by sea every year, and the Coast Guard says it can only stop one-quarter of it

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