Vietnam seizes ivory shipment

Around a half tonne of ivory hidden in a timber shipment has been seized in Vietnam, an official said, the second large haul of the illegally-trafficked product in a week.

The haul was discovered at a Ho Chi Minh City port in two crates of timber from Mozambique, customs official Vo Thanh Hung said yesterday.

He said authorities were testing the 500kg haul to “conclude if they are elephant tusks”. The latest catch follows last week’s discovery of 300kg of elephant ivory in Hanoi’s airport, where officials found tusks from Nigeria falsely labelled as glass.