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Illegals found in party trucks
06/08/2006 19:36 - (SA)
Ceuta - Spanish police caught more
than 300 immigrants hiding in fairground equipment on its way
back to Spain from a fiesta in the north African enclave of
Ceuta, police sources said on Sunday.
Immigrants hid in rollercoaster cars and under trucks,
hoping to hitch a lift across the Straits of Gibraltar, adding
to the scores of African immigrants who have arrived on Spanish
beaches in the past week.
The police sources said most of the would-be immigrants were
Moroccans who would be returned to the other side of a wire
fence that surrounds Ceuta.
Many Moroccans have visas allowing them into the enclave, but
not mainland Spain. Every year, dozens try to smuggle themselves
across to Europe in the colourful convoy of trucks that
transport the rides to the August fiesta.
A record number of immigrants have flooded Spain this year.
Most of them travelled from Mauritania to the Canary Islands,
where hundreds landed on tourist-packed beaches last week.
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