Incredible moment drug smugglers interrupt stunned tourists by beaching their boat and shooting straight past sunbathers to escape the Spanish coastguard

This is the astonishing moment drug smugglers leave their boat stranded by stunned tourists after a Miami Vice-style chase.

The men were filmed walking at high speed towards the sand, narrowly missing the parasols that sunbathers had rushed away from as they rammed them into the dunes.

They jumped from the ship – a so-called narcolancha used to smuggle cannabis from Morocco to Spain – when the police who had been chasing them radioed to colleagues for emergency vehicles to intervene.

Two of the men were arrested as they tried to escape, but the others escaped.

The extraordinary scenes took place on Monday on a busy beach called Los Enebrales in Punta Umbria in the southwestern Spanish province of Huelva, near the country’s border with Portugal.

The men were filmed walking at high speed towards the sand, narrowly missing the parasols that sunbathers had rushed away from as they rammed them into the dunes

Local reports say the boat stranded on the sand was empty when it was abandoned, although it is thought the drug smugglers had been waiting for a call to pick up an illegal shipment of drugs from a larger vessel further out to sea when they were spotted . by police.

Footage of the moment they decided to head for the shoreline rather than try to shake off the pursuing vigilante group showed them coming within meters of where a family was believed to have been enjoying the sun before the tragedy unfolded.

Police were later seen inside the boat, turning off the engine as tourists and locals looked on.

There were no reports of injuries.

Beaches on the Costa del Sol, further east, have been the scene of similar incidents in the past.

In 2018, a beach in Manilva near Estepona was the scene of a chase involving a police helicopter and a suspected drug smuggler.

The men jumped from the ship when the police who had been chasing them radioed colleagues for emergency vehicles to be ready

The extraordinary scenes took place on Monday on a busy beach called Los Enebrales in Punta Umbria in the southwestern Spanish province of Huelva, near the country’s border with Portugal.

Some tourists were filmed running for their lives, fearing the high-speed boat would crash onto the beach and into the crowd.

In September 2019, holidaymakers watched in bewilderment as a group of drug smugglers took over another beach near the seaside resort of Estepona in broad daylight, transporting cannabis resin from a speedboat to a 4×4 parked on the shoreline.

The gang of men, who threatened to kill witnesses if they alerted police, took less than three minutes to carry out the transfer and their escape.

A drug gang carries bags allegedly containing cannabis resin from a speedboat (right) to a parked car (left) on Spain’s Costa del Sol in 2019

The gang of men, who threatened to kill witnesses if they alerted police, took less than three minutes to carry out the transfer and their escape.

The men filmed themselves running from the boat to the 4×4 and dumping the drugs in the back. They nearly tripped over two groups of sunbathers lying on towels on the sand as they sprinted between them, bags of cannabis resin on their shoulders, to reach the car.

One of the drug traffickers could be heard shouting in Spanish, in a chilling warning to one of the tourists the criminals were running past: “The cellphone. If you call, I’ll kill you.’

The threat was made and recorded by witnesses who filmed the drug drop from a property overlooking the beach, at the start of the three-minute video.