Despicable: 11-year old child in critical condition after father uses her as cocaine drug mule

Drugs mule: The 11-year-old was rushed to a hospital in Santiago de Cali, Colombia, after a cocaine capsule burst in her stomach, where doctors found 104 capsules during surgery

An 11-year-old Colombian girl is in critical condition after one of more than 100 cocaine capsules her father had made her swallow as part of a drug mule operation, burst in her stomach.

The girl was rushed to hospital in Santiago de Cali, Colombia, where doctors removed nearly 1.2lbs of cocaine during surgery.

Police are now hunting for the schoolgirl's father, who is accused of forcing her to swallow 104 cocaine capsules so he could use her as a drug mule for a flight to Spain.

The schoolgirl underwent a life-saving operation after her father and another relative had rushed her to a hospital in Santiago de Cali early on Monday morning.

The father and the relative then disappeared after leaving the 11-year-old with medics.

The unnamed youngster was hours away from taking a flight to Madrid with her father, after which the two would have continued to the Canary Islands, police said.

CCTV images from the hospital she was taken to showed a man rushing towards the A&E ward carrying her in his arms.

He is later seen talking to a second man in a corridor outside, before leaving the building by the door they had come through minutes earlier.

Detectives were last night quizzing the youngster's mother while they hunted for her husband.

Cali police chief Hoover Penilla said: 'The girl underwent emergency surgery because of the risk to her life and 104 capsules that appear to be cocaine capsules were removed from her body.

'Everything is pointing to the fact this youngster was going to be used in a twisted way by adults as a drugs mule to transport drugs from Colombia to another country.'

He added: 'They had flights reserved to travel from Cali to Bogota and then an onward connection Bogota to Madrid with a final destination of Gran Canaria.

Snowstorm: The 11-year-old schoolgirl from Santiago De Cali was hours away from taking a flight to Madrid with her father, after which the two would have continued to the Canary Islands, police said

Jhon Arley Murillo, a spokesman for the Colombian Family Welfare Institute which will now take temporary care of the schoolgirl, added: 'A case like this is horrific because it puts the life of an 11-year-old girl at risk.

'We are going to take steps to offer her protection and remove her from her harmful family environment.'

Detectives investing the drama have already discovered her parents applied for a visa for her at the start of the year so she could travel abroad.

They are understood to have told her school last week she would be away for a fortnight.

The girl's mum has told police she and her husband were estranged but detectives say they believe she may be lying after searching the family home and finding evidence they still lived together.

A passport in her name and the plane ticket to Spain were found during the search.

Tests on the capsules removed from her stomach were expected to confirm today they contained cocaine.

The youngster remains in intensive care at Cali's Valle del Lili Hospital, although her life is not said to be at risk.

It is thought to be the first time the girl was going to be used as a drugs mule and police say they have never seen the tactic employed before by drugs trafficking gangs.

A local TV station reporting on the case branded the adults involved as 'savages.'

Colombia, alongside Peru, is known as one of the world's top exporters of cocaine.

Police at Madrid Airport have in the past stopped drugs traffickers carrying cocaine sewn into the underside of wigs, hidden inside false plaster casts and stashed inside the arms of wheelchairs.

The city of Cali became synonymous with cocaine in the eighties and nineties.

The Cali Cartel, a drug cartel based around the city and the Valle del Cauca department, was once renowned and compared to the Russian KGB by the American Drugs Enforcement Agency which called it 'the most powerful crime syndicate in history.'

At the height of its reign, they were said to have control over 90 per cent of the world's cocaine market.