Brothers Santiago and Carlos Alberto Noreña Mesa and their cousin, Carlos Julio Noreña Restrepo, will appear before a federal court in Florida on drug charges.

gang accused of smuggling heroin from Colombia to the United States has been dismantled in a joint operation by the Colombian police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, officials said Wednesday.

Twelve suspects have been arrested in recent hours, including three gang leaders wanted for extradition by the United States, the director of Colombia's drug enforcement agency, Gen. Cesar Augusto Pinzon, said.

Brothers Santiago and Carlos Alberto Noreña Mesa and their cousin, Carlos Julio Noreña Restrepo, will appear before a federal court in Florida on drug charges.

Seven other suspects were arrested in Colombia - in the northwestern city of Medellin and in Ipiales, near the border with Ecuador - while another two people were detained in New York and Miami.

The operation, dubbed "Alianza 16," also led to the dismantling of a cocaine laboratory in the northwestern town of Guarne and the seizure of 27 kilos of that drug.

Gen. Pinzon said the gang smuggled the drugs out of Colombia via direct flights from the Medellin airport to Miami or New York and overland through Ecuador.

The gang used drug mules to smuggle the heroin and also hid the narcotics in false bottoms of suitcases and inside handicrafts, the general said.