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1 100+ illegals intercepted
03/09/2006 22:58 - (SA)
Madrid - Spanish police caught more than 1 100 Africans trying to reach the Canary Island - a record for a weekend - after long, dangerous trips in overcrowded boats that set out from Mauritania, officials said on Sunday.
At least 12 boats carrying 1 196 people reached the islands in the span of 36 hours, civil guard officials said. All the sub-Saharan migrants, including children, were in good health, they added.
Almost 680 arrived on Saturday in eight boats and 522 reached shore in five boats on Sunday.
More than 20 000 Africans have been intercepted so far this year in the archipelago, and the number for August alone exceeds that for all of 2005, according to Spanish authorities. Spain has asked the European Union, the United Nations and the international community to help with the situation. Frustration
Spanish deputy prime minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega travelled to Brussels last week to press EU officials for more help and express Spanish frustration with an EU plan to monitor African waters from the air and sea, which was approved in May and has yet to begin in earnest.
Last year authorities caught 4 751 African migrants trying to reach the Canary Islands, the vast majority packed into narrow, open boats that sometimes take weeks to make the dangerous voyages. Thousands more are believed to have died in the choppy seas.
Those who make it are kept in holding centres, and authorities have 40 days to repatriate them before they must release them. The immigrants are either sent back to their country of origin or to the country from which they set sail, if Spain has repatriation accords with that country.
- AP
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