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Egypt cops arrests 13 Africans
23/03/2008 13:20 - (SA)
Rafah - Egyptian police arrested 13 Africans on Sunday as they tried to cross into Israel to look for work or political asylum there, said a police official.
The arrested Africans included men, women and children from Eritrea, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Sudan, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not allowed to talk to the media.
The traffickers had charged each African from the group $500 for shelter and passage from Cairo, the Egyptian capital were the group was first assembled, and across Egypt's Sinai Peninsula to the Israeli border, the official said.
From there, they were to be smuggled into Israel just a few kilometres (miles) south of the Rafah border crossing point.
The arrest was the latest in near-daily attempts by illegal migrants to make it to Israel from Egypt.
Refugees hope to make it to Israel
Among the three children and four women in the group, one was a Sudanese Christian woman who was arrested with her two children. She told police that she had come from the wartorn Darfur region and was seeking asylum in Israel.
Imad Kharboush, head of the northern Sinai emergency unit said all the Africans were examined at Rafah Hospital to make sure that they didn't carry any serious disease.
Hundreds of African refugees hoped to make it to Israel. Dozens had been detained over the past year and at least six had been killed this year by Egyptian border guards.
Africans began trickling into Israel in 2005, after Egyptian authorities quashed a demonstration by a group of Sudanese refugees. In recent months, the number had surged as word spread of job opportunities in Israel.
More than 7 000 African migrants had entered the Jewish state illegally in just more than a year, including at least 2 000 since January, according to United Nations officials in Israel.
Israel had asked Egypt to do more to stem the tide of trafficking and weapons flow across Egypt's volatile boundaries in the Sinai - both the border with Israel and the adjoining boundary separating Egypt and the coastal Gaza Strip, controlled by the Palestinian Hamas.
- AP
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