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Libya expels illegal immigrants
17/01/2008 08:12 - (SA)
Tripoli - Libya has begun rounding up and immediately expelling all illegal immigrants in the north African state, the official news agency JANA said on Wednesday.
It said the country had decided "to begin immediate roundup operations of all immigrants in an irregular situation, without exception, and their immediate repatriation".
More than one million illegal immigrants were believed to live in the country which, according to Tripoli's latest figures, repatriated 64 430 of them in 2006 at an estimated cost of nearly €4m.
The North African country was a favoured destination for Africans from the east and south both because of its oil wealth and, with its 1 770km Mediterranean coastline, the possibilities for reaching Malta or the Italian island of Lampedusa, both part of the European Union.
Hundreds of people trying to reach Europe this way drowned when rickety and overcrowded boats capsized after leaving Libya.
An Italy-based group, Fortress Europe, which compiled numbers of drownings and other deaths from press reports, put the toll for 2007 at 1 861, compared with 2 088 for 2006.
Libyan authorities on Wednesday warned "Libyan citizens who accommodate or conceal a clandestine immigrant" that they would be prosecuted and fined, the agency said.
Interior ministry officials would be responsible for rounding up the illegals and taking them to the frontier "in a civilised manner" while the finance ministry would provide funds for the operation.
Libya's housing ministry would have the job of clearing out the corrugated iron shacks and other temporary dwellings, which sheltered the immigrants
Earlier this month, the Italian coastguard said that in 24 hours it had intercepted more than 300 boat people sailing in chilly Mediterranean waters off Sicily and Sardinia.
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