Bogota, May 21 (teleSUR-RHC)-- A plane with a ton of cocaine crashed in the Caribbean sea off the Colombian northern coast on Wednesday after being chased by Colombian air force jets.

The small plane was "destined for Central America" when it "illegally entered Colombian air space", the air force said in a statement.

The statement added that the crash happened as a result of the failure of one of the plane's engines. According to the Colombian coast guard, a body, they believed to be the pilot’s, was recovered from the wreckage shortly after the crash. The pilot was identified as an unnamed Mexican national by a passport retrieved from his body.

The coast guard also found 1.2 metric tons of cocaine from the debris. Cocaine often makes its way to buyers in the United States and Europe via smuggling routes through Central America and Mexico and across the Caribbean and Atlantic oceans. Colombia produces about 300 tons of cocaine annually, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Authorities confiscated some 166 tonnes in 2014.