Hanoi  - Police in Hanoi have arrested a man found transporting a butchered tiger carcass, a police official said Thursday.

Nguyen Van Thanh, deputy chief of police in Hanoi's Dong Da District, said officers from his department and from Hanoi's Environmental Police arrested a 30-year-old man Wednesday as he was driving his car.

Inside the car, police found a trunk containing most of the carcass of an 80-kilogram tiger. One of the tiger's flanks was missing.

Police said the man had confessed to being hired to transport the carcass, but had not revealed who had hired him or who the recipient was.

Tigers, once widespread in Vietnam, are now extremely rare, occurring only in the Truong Son mountain range on the Laotian border.

They are hunted for their meat and for making "tiger paste," a traditional medicine made from boiled tiger bones. The paste, said to restore the bones of the elderly, sells for as much as 5,000 dollars per kilogram on the black market.

Under Vietnamese law, hunting, transporting or trading in rare animals are subject to punishment of a prison term of up to seven years and a cash fine of up to 20 million dong (1,250 dollars). (dpa)