Reports from Indonesia say customs officials at Jakarta's international airport have foiled an attempt to smuggle more than twelve-hundred live, poisonous snakes to China.

The report, carried by the state television, said most of the snakes were cobras labelled as freshwater turtles for export and packed in plastic sacks.

A customs official said the shipment, worth about sixty-thousand dollars, was bound for China aboard a Singapore Airlines flight.

Snakes are prized in China as a delicacy.