AUDACIOUS drug gangsters ambushed police to reclaim a high-speed vessel abandoned on the Andalucian coast.
The attack occurred early this week on a rural road near the town of Moguer, Huelva.
Guardia Civil patrols, responding to an alert that a tractor hauling a narco boat had overturned, were ambushed by masked men hurling rocks at them when they went to intervene.
The officers were forced to call for immediate backup, allowing the smugglers to escape into the fields and successfully avoid arrest.
READ MORE: Police rumble narcos loading up on fuel on popular Marbella beach loved by expats and tourists
This new level of impunity was exposed by Storm Claudia, which battered the coast along western Andalucia, forcing the narcos to come into shore to seek shelter.
What was seen was then an astonishing display of numbers, as the frothy seas became dotted with the narco speed boats like a cloud of mosquitos.
During the storm, at least eight narco vessels were sighted off the Huelva coastline, with many abandoned by their crews to wash up at popular spots.
Other smugglers also tried to recover their high-value assets, including a separate attempted smash-and-grab theft on a boat stranded at the Espigon beach.
The sight came only days after Spain’s Chief Anti-Drug Prosecutor, Ana Rosa Morán, warned that the Atlantic is ‘scandalously full of narco boats, and also narco-submarines’.
She added that the massive oversupply of cocaine is fuelling fierce competition among heavily armed international gangs, risking turning Spain into a drug battleground akin to what has been seen in the Netherlands.
The escalating violence has prompted a formal warning from the Professional Association of Civil Guards (AUGC), which states its officers are being left ‘defenceless’ on the front line.
The association warns that patrols assigned to guard the beached vessels are severely exposed, lacking essential equipment like long guns or night vision gear.
They are forced to operate in ‘completely dark’ conditions, facing gangs that are known to carry military-grade weapons.
This crisis follows the tragic death of a Portuguese National Republican Guard (GNR) officer in late October, who was killed after his patrol boat was deliberately rammed by traffickers on the nearby Guadiana River.
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