(RTTNews) - Kenyan authorities have seized some 300 kilograms of illegal ivory and rhino tusks from a plane bound for Laos from Mozambique, said officials on Tuesday.

Officials said that the illegal cargo was hidden in coffins and added that it was seized when the plane made a brief stopover at Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport between its journey to Laos from Mozambique.

They said that the seized consignment, which has a market value of over a million dollars, contained 16 elephant tusks and two black rhinoceros horns, adding that the blood stains on the ivory and rhino horns suggested that the animals had been killed very recently.

Though poaching elephants and black rhinos is illegal, some countries have done little to enforce the ban. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species banned trade in ivory in 1989. It bans all ivory trade, except the sale of ivory from pre-1989 ivory stockpiles.

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