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Thirteen Drowned Trying to Flee Morocco for Spain
RABAT, Sept 9 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The bodies of 13 would-be illegal immigrants trying to reach Spain were found washed ashore on a Moroccan beach, news agencies reported Sunday.
According to Moroccan television, they were found - along with an injured survivor - late Saturday on the beach at Sidi Bouknadel, 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Rabat.
The injured man was taken to a hospital.
He told the gendarmerie that the victims were from a group of 60 Moroccans trying to cross the Atlantic Ocean by boat to reach Spain.
It was not immediately clear what happened to those who remained on board or their boat.
In a separate incident, Morocco's Royal Navy intercepted an engine-powered dinghy carrying another 39 would-be immigrants, Morocco's state-run RTM radio said Sunday.
The boat was picked up off Morocco's northern Atlantic coastline, near the Strait of Gibraltar late Saturday.
The radio said the group, which included one woman, was trying to reach southern Spain.
Last year, about 15,000 African immigrants were caught trying to enter Spain through the Strait of Gibraltar; scores drowned in the attempt, according to official figures.
This year, the numbers are even greater. In the last two weeks of August alone, police have caught more than 1,000 people trying to cross the divide, many of them in ramshackle boats.
The would-be Spanish migrants in the latest incident are believed to have paid traffickers about $800 each to be smuggled to Europe.
The growing tide of clandestine arrivals from Morocco has led to tensions with Spain. Last month Spain complained to the Moroccan ambassador about the problem of illegal immigration after nearly 1,000 new arrivals in less than a week landed on its shores.
The Spanish foreign minister called the situation unacceptable and called on Morocco to honor an agreement signed last month to do more to control the mafias on its coastline.
In 2000, Moroccan and Spanish authorities intercepted some 35,000 would-be illegal immigrants.
Spanish police also recovered the bodies of six North African men on the southern coast, near the port of Tarifa in July.
The issue of unwanted asylum-seekers has been thrown back into the international spotlight in the past month, with rows developing between several countries over the fate of would-be immigrants.
Australia, Indonesia and Norway squared up last month over what do to with more than 400, mostly Afghan, asylum-seekers rescued by a Norwegian freighter from a sinking ferry close to Australia's Christmas Island. Australia and Indonesia also stopped two more boatloads of asylum-seekers this weekend.
France and Britain have been arguing over migrants trying to cross the English Channel into Britain. The British media has blasted France for letting hundreds of immigrants mass in a camp near the entrance to the Channel Tunnel, which links the countries.
Some 100 Afghans, Iranians, and Iraqi and Turkish Kurds were arrested while trying to walk along the rail tracks in the tunnel last Sunday.
In Hungary last year, police discovered 46 people in suffocating conditions in the back of an airless lorry.
Also last year, 58 Chinese migrants died of suffocation in similar conditions before arriving at the British port of Dover.
According to the BBC's online service, the European Union estimates that half a million people enter the Europe illegally every year.
The EU announced earlier this year that it was planning on imposing stronger penalties for smugglers facilitating or carrying out such activities.
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