Immigrants die swimming for Spain

2002-08-02 07:00

Cadiz, Spain - The bodies of 13 illegal immigrants thought to have drowned while trying to enter Spain were found Thursday on the shores near Tarifa, a city facing Morocco on Spain's southernmost tip, civil guard police said.

The group - eight from sub-Saharan Africa and five from north Africa - are believed to have drowned while trying to swim to shore, but no boat has yet been found by the civil guard and Red Cross workers searching the area, a civil guard spokesperson said.

"The people responsible for these deaths are only and exclusively the organised mafia networks that use human lives for their own benefit," interior minister Angel Acebes said in Madrid after holding talks on immigration with his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy.

Army divers based in Ceuta, one of Spain's two enclaves on the Moroccan coast, were set to search the waters for more victims.

The deaths bring to 31 the number of illegal immigrants known to have died while trying to cross the waters between North African and either the Spanish mainland or the Spanish Canary Isles in the Atlantic, according to the Association of Immigrant Moroccan Workers in Spain.

A civil guard patrol came upon the bodies early Thursday morning in the coastal town of Barranco Hondo, near Tarifa.

The discovery came just a day after the civil guard intercepted 62 people from north Africa attempting to enter Spain by way of Tarifa, mainland Spain's southernmost city.

And on Wednesday Spanish police said they intercepted a total of 98 north Africans, including 13 minors and three pregnant woman, near Tarifa and the Canary Islands.

They also said they had intercepted more than 100 sub-Saharan Africans in the past week.

Thousands returned

At Tarica, Spain is separated from Morocco by the 14km-wide Strait of Gibraltar.

In February, 10 people, including a child and woman, died while trying to cross the strait.

And on July 24, 14 people were declared missing, including a child whose parents later made it across the strait to Tarifa. The two Moroccans who smuggled the group into Spain were imprisoned and charged with involuntary homicide.

Thousands of illegal immigrants are stopped when they arrive in Spanish coastal areas each year and the issue has become a bone of contention between Spain and Morocco.

Spanish police have said that the number of immigrants entering the country illegally has dropped since a military row with Morocco erupted last month over the sovereignty of a tiny Mediterranean outcrop to which both countries lay claim.

The Spanish government has been mulling plans to toughen its asylum policy and crack down on illegal immigration and people smuggling.

So far this year, Spanish authorities have ordered nearly 13 000 immigrants expelled - almost as many as the 12 700 thrown out in all of 2001. - Sapa-AFP

- SAPA