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Illegals must stay on ship
12/02/2007 00:49 - (SA)
Ahmed Mohamed
Nouakchott - A broken-down ship carrying about 400 illegal migrants will not be allowed to dock in Mauritania before Monday, officials said.
The vessel has spent more than a week at sea off the coast of the northwest African country as Spanish and Mauritanian officials argued about what government should take them in.
Mauritania eventually agreed to let the rusty, broken down vessel dock and allow its occupants ashore, on the condition that Spain would supply medical facilities for the migrants and planes to fly them out.
But the boat was still waiting a few kilometres off the port city of Nouadhibou on Sunday and Nouadhibou Governor Mohamed Yahya Ould Mohamed Vall said no one would be allowed to disembark until medical facilities were ready - Monday at the earliest.
He added that three planes had already arrived to transport the migrants - a mixture of Africans and Asians - back to their countries of origin.
The ship, called Marine 1, had been heading to Spain's Canary Islands, but ran into mechanical problems and was towed off the Mauritanian coast by a Spanish rescue ship a week ago.
Once the ship docks, a team from the Republic of Guinea - where the ship in believed to have come from - will try to identify the migrants before trying to repatriate them, Spanish officials said.
Most of the migrants were believed to be from Pakistan, officials have said.
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