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10/09/2005:

"500 dumped in desert"

Madrid: African immigrants attempting to reach Spain are being deported by Morocco to the Sahara Desert without food or drink, Spanish Press reports said yesterday.

Non-governmental organisations in Spain are critical of Madrid’s decision to start expelling illegal migrants from west and central Africa back over the Moroccan border, saying they risk dying in the desert or being mistreated by Moroccan police.

Spain expelled a first group of 70 Malians to the Moroccan city of Tangier on Thursday in an attempt to discourage Africans from storming the border fences surrounding the Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast.

Six immigrants died on Thursday in an attempt by hundreds of migrants to storm the Melilla border, bringing to 14 the death toll along the borders of the two enclaves within a little over a month.Morocco said its security forces had fired in self-defence, killing some of the migrants while others were trampled to death.

More than 13,000 would-be immigrants have participated in massive, coordinated attempts to storm the Melilla border so far this year.
The Spanish government said the expelled Malians would return to their home country, but press reports said Morocco was rounding up large numbers of sub-Saharan Africans near Melilla and other places and then taking them by bus to the desert near the Algerian border.

Formerly, Morocco deported migrants to the region of Oujda, from where they returned to the border area of Ceuta or Melilla and made a fresh attempt to enter Spain, according to the daily El Pais. Morocco has now started taking illegals to the desert 500 kilometres south of Oujda, where there is no food or drink available, according to the daily.
“In front of us, there is nothing but sand, rocks, hills and a lot of sun,” Congolese Philippe Tamouneke told El Pais by telephone.

Tamouneke said he was handcuffed, put on a bus for nine hours and left in the desert. His group included a pregnant woman and three children, he added.
bahraintribune.com