Detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) are holding a middle-aged woman who was nabbed with narcotic drugs worth Ksh3.5 million.
In a statement on Sunday, the authorities indicated that the middle-aged woman was arrested in the Coastal town while carrying a brown bag.
The officers, who were working on a tip-off from the public arrested the suspect during the ambush.
"A Transnational Organized Crime Cartel has been dealt a blow following the arrest of one of their actors and subsequent recovery of Narcotic Drugs suspected to be heroin with a street value of Ksh 3,540,000," read the DCI statement in part.
"The Suspect was apprehended by Transnational Organized Crime Unit (TOCU) detectives based in Mombasa and Anti-Nacortics Unit (ANU) detectives based at Malindi who while acting on intelligence leads intercepted the suspect who was carrying a brown carrier bag with the suspected narcotic drugs."
She will be arraigned before the court as the search for other players in the cartel continues.
The arrests come at a time when detectives from the DCI have launched crackdowns on drug dealers believed to be operating internationally.
In mid-September, the detectives arrested a Polish citizen with heroin worth Ksh3.2 million at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).
The agency revealed that the anti-narcotics sleuths based at JKIA nabbed the foreigner, aged 37 at JKIA's Terminal 1C with the drugs, a few moments before boarding a Hungary-bound Egyptian airplane.
The drug suspected to be heroin, was found stuffed inside the drug trafficker's luggage.
According to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), drug trafficking has recorded a surge along the Kenyan coast over the years.
As part of the counter-drug trafficking operations in the country, the UNODC trained 20 officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) and the Kenya Coast Guard Service (KCGS) to combat the operations on land and at sea.
