 Border guards go on high alert as summer approaches |
Customs officials in Russia have prevented an attempt to smuggle bear cubs from the country's Far East to China. Three one-month-old bear cubs were found in the compartment of a Chinese locomotive engineer at a small railway station near the Russian-Chinese border, the Itar-Tass news agency said.
The animals had been tranquilised and put into a cardboard box for the journey to China.
The officers also found two sacks bulging with more than 1,200 squirrel and fox skins in the driver's compartment.
The Chinese engineer is to face criminal charges.
Russian border guards are put on heightened alert with the approach of summer - the season when Chinese cross-border poachers are at their most active.
Last April, they rescued 17 bear cubs being taken to China inside apple cartons at a border crossing in the Primorye Territory, north of Vladivostok.
A month later, guards in the same area caught two Chinese citizens trying to smuggle severed bear paws and a tiger skin out of Russia.
The 32 Himalayan bear paws were frozen and ready wrapped for sale back home, where they are considered to be delicacies.
One-Minute World News 
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