Peru arrests 20 over ties to Mexican drug cartel

LIMA (Reuters) - Peruvian police have arrested 20 people suspected of working for Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel and seized 2.5 tonnes of cocaine hidden in boat bumpers, Peru's interior ministry said on Monday.

The seizure, valued at $125 million, included the arrest of four Mexicans, three Colombians and 13 Peruvians. The bust was the strongest sign yet the powerful Sinaloa cartel is making inroads in Peru, the world's No. 2 grower of coca behind Colombia.

The cocaine was found over the weekend in a working-class neighborhood of Lima, tucked inside some 200 bumpers that are put around boats for protection while docked.

Over the last few years, traffickers leaving Peru have largely abandoned clandestine air travel for sea transport, which is harder to track.

Police say they are making more drug busts than ever, thanks in part to millions of dollars in anti-drug spending.

Last year, officials found and burned 20 tonnes of cocaine, worth more than $2 billion -- a record high for the Andean country. Police have burned 20 tonnes of the drug so far this year.

But coca cultivation in Peru is also on the rise. It increased some 4 percent last year, according to the United Nations.

Farms in remote jungle areas that grow coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine, are often guarded by remnants of the Shining Path, a leftist insurgency that terrorized Peru for much of the 1980s and 1990s. The organization largely collapsed after its leaders were arrested and jailed.

Drug violence has claimed thousands of lives in Mexico over the past few years in clashes among rival drug gangs and the government. The Mexican cartels smuggle South American cocaine into the United States.

(Reporting by Marco Aquino; Writing by Dana Ford; Editing by Terry Wade and Eric Beech)