DAKAR — A Boeing plane that used to transport cocaine from Venezuela to West Africa crashed in northern Mali earlier this month after a failed take-off, the representative of the UN's regional office on drugs and crime said Monday.

"A Boeing coming from Venezuela landed on a makeshift landing strip some 15 kilometres (nine miles) from Gao (in the north east) and unloaded cocaine and other illegal substances," Alexandre Schmidt of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) told journalists in Dakar.

"The plane wanted to take off but crashed on November 5th," he added.

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