TEGUCIGALPA – A cocaine processing laboratory was found Tuesday in San Francisco, a district in the Caribbean province of Atlantida, but no arrests have been made, a Honduran police spokesman said.

The lab was on the Villa Hermosa estate and contained chemicals, ovens and “a good quantity of (cocaine) paste,” a police spokesman in the city of La Ceiba told reporters.

National Special Investigative Services Administration, Drug Enforcement Agency and police officers cordoned off the property and are gathering evidence, the police spokesman said.

The wreckage of a small plane was found in the area, a correspondent for Tegucigalpa’s Radio America reported.

A cocaine lab was found in the El Merendon mountains of northwestern Honduras last year.

The Caribbean region of this Central American country is used by South American drug traffickers who smuggle cocaine into the United States by air and sea.

Small planes unload drugs in some parts of Gracias a Dios, Colon, Olancho and Alantida provinces, officials say.

Honduran police are working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to halt the flow of cocaine into the country.

Authorities have seized about six tons of cocaine so far this year and confiscated more than 22 tons of cocaine in 2011. EFE