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Ammunition used in AK-47 rifles is shown by a Colombian police officer in the city of Medellin on Sept. 4, 2008. On Thursday customs agents on the U.S.-Mexico border seized 250,000 rounds of this type of ammunition. (Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images)
Around 268,000 rounds of assault rifle ammunition that was being transported south across the U.S.-Mexico border was seized, media reports said.
An American truck driver entering Mexico from the United States was arrested, the EFE news agency reported, citing local officials in Ciudad Juarez.
The driver, a 37-year-old man from Dallas, “told the customs agents that he was not carrying any cargo,” a customs agent recalled to the news agency.
“But when they inspected the truck, they found 250,000 rounds of 7.62 x 39 caliber (ammunition) of the type used in the so-called ‘goat’s horns’ rifles (AK-47s), as well as another 18,000 rounds of the 5.56 x 45 caliber (ammunition) used by AR-15 (assault) rifles,” the agent said.
The official estimated that the ammunition is worth around $80,000, the news agency said.
Most of the weapons used by operatives in drug cartels have been traced back to the United States, according to a 2009 report by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Mexican President Felipe Calderon has said that the two countries need to tighten border control.
