Spanish police defuse hostage crisis among drug boat crew, arrest all

Spanish police arrested a group of suspected cocaine traffickers on a boat from South America in the middle of the Atlantic after one of them shot dead a fellow smuggler and took the rest hostage, the interior ministry said on Wednesday. In an apparent falling-out among the boat's crew, a Serbian national seized control of the vessel Sea Paradise, shot one of the other smugglers, threw his body overboard and took the eight other crew members hostage, a ministry statement said. Tipped off about a shipment of some 2.3 tonnes of cocaine from Latin America to be transferred to a smaller boat near the Canary Islands, Spanish police launched an operation to seize the drug during which they discovered the hostage situation.