Police nabbed 23 suspects in coordinated raids targeting a gang of drug dealers in and around the western German cities of Bonn and Cologne on Tuesday.
More than 300 officers were involved in the operation and 35 flats searched, police in Bonn said.
Twelve people were formally arrested and 11 others detained.
Two brothers from Bonn are suspected of running the narcotics gang.
Police say they focused on dealing cocaine while other members sold marijuana.
A helicopter circled over Bonn during the police operation in order to pinpoint suspects as they fled.
Officers confiscated one kilogramme of marijuana and hash and 75 grammes of cocaine as well as anabolic agents, cash and several mobile phones.
Earlier, police officers raided flats and offices in Northern and Central Germany in a major operation against suspected human traffickers, police said.
The officers acted on 21 search warrants in Hamburg, Bremen and other parts of Northern and Central Germany from late Monday into Tuesday, a police spokesman said.
Several suspects allegedly trafficked people mainly of Moldovan nationality into Germany for illegal labour.
Many of those suspects are thought to have links to Germany’s Reichsbuerger movement, which claims that the modern German federal republic is illegitimate.
The spokesman said three men, aged between 30 and 43, were detained in the port city of Hamburg on Monday.
Two of them were German and the other Russian.
Source: (NAN)
