Human smugglers trying new tactics to evade U.S. authorities
By CURT ANDERSON
5 June 2005

MIAMI (AP) - Instead of refugees on rickety rafts and aging boats, U.S. officials are increasingly confronted with profit-seeking human smugglers using sophisticated speedboats to bring Cubans, Haitians and even Chinese to Florida.

"You're far more likely to make it to land on a fast boat than on a raft," said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. "We're certainly seeing an increase in human smuggling."

And the smugglers are often avoiding the more heavily patrolled areas such as the Florida Keys and bringing their cargos of people, usually paying $8,000 to $10,000 a head, to more remote locales farther up the coast.

"They look for areas that are not as populated," said Coast Guard spokesman Luis Diaz.

South Florida has long been a destination for smugglers from the Caribbean and Latin America, from the rumrunners of the 1930s to the drug traffickers of the 1980s. Refugees from Cuba, Haiti and other countries are just another way smugglers can make money, authorities say.

In the past few months, authorities in Collier and Lee counties on Florida's southwest coast have seized seven boats involved in smuggling operations, some of them carrying drums of fuel and other supplies required for the longer trip from Cuba. On the east coast, at least four separate groups of migrants have landed in the past three months north of Palm Beach, including some people from China.

In one typical case, 15 Cuban migrants including four children used a homemade "chug-chug" vessel to reach an island in the Bahamas, where they were met by prearrangement by smugglers in a 29-foot boat with twin outboard engines that was able to reach speeds of 35 knots. Although that group was caught in October 2004, many others likely get through.

Robert Woods, assistant special agent in charge of U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Miami, said the "go-fast" boats are only part of the organized criminal enterprises that smuggle people into South Florida. He said undercover ICE investigations have resulted in 75 convictions of such organizations in the past two years.

"There are a lot of different schemes and you need a lot of people in a network to do that," Woods said. "The boat driver is the key to other components of the organization. We go after the whole organization."

Woods said that since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, federal authorities have been concerned that al-Qaida might attempt to use these established smuggling rings to insert operatives in the United States. To date, he said, there has been no evidence of a terrorist connection.

Yet people keep coming from all over the world. Chinese can fly from Beijing to Moscow to Havana and hop on a go-fast boat to the United States, Woods said. Several dozen Ukrainians have been detained in recent months after attempting to sail from the Dominican Republican to South Florida.

The Coast Guard arrests six to eight groups of smugglers and migrants each month, many of them repeat offenders. Smugglers face up to three years minimum in prison if they are caught with more than 10 migrants, according to federal prosecutors.

As of Wednesday, the Coast Guard had intercepted 5,700 migrants so far this year attempting to reach the United States by sea. Of those, about 1,300 were Cubans, 1,300 were Haitians and the rest included Dominicans, Mexicans, Ecuadoreans and Chinese.

Migrants intercepted at sea are generally repatriated to their home countries. Except for Cubans, those who reach U.S. shores are either released on bond or kept in detention pending a decision on whether they can stay. Cubans who reach U.S. soil are generally allowed to stay under laws enacted to undermine the communist government of President Fidel Castro.

Beyond the legal implications are safety concerns. While there are no firm numbers available, Coast Guard officials say many migrants perish at sea aboard smugglers' boats that are usually not outfitted for safety.

"Rough seas claim many lives. Sometimes it's impossible to know," Diaz said.

For example, in the October 2004 case, the smugglers' boat was in poor condition, with cracks in the hull and other damage, according to an ICE affidavit filed in federal court. There were only 10 life jackets, and those were "in an unusable condition, tied together in knots or damaged."

There was food and drink on board, but it had been tossed into a forward compartment and were "covered in oil and water," according to the ICE documents.

To combat the problem, federal authorities are forming task forces with state and local police to look for telltale smuggler clues, such as boats carrying far too much fuel for what appears to be a simple fishing trip.

Yet with thousands of Cubans, Haitians and others in the United States wishing to bring family and friends to this country, those with the money will likely continue to risk hiring smugglers only too eager to take the money and take to the sea.

"As the Coast Guard steps up their efforts and interdicts vessels trying to reach U.S. shores, it's not surprising we would see an increase in the human smuggler. People are very vulnerable to exploitation," Little said.

------
On the Net:

Coast Guard Miami: http://www.d7publicaffairs.com
Immigration and Customs Enforcement: http://www.ice.gov

'It's ridiculous these people were brought all the way to the UK'
By John Twomey and Tom Whitehead
8 June 2005
The Daily Express

Illegal immigrants rescued in the Mediterranean and skipper brings them here

A BOAT load of asylum seekers were dumped in Britain after they were rescued in the Mediterranean and taken on a 2,000-mile voyage.

Terrified and seasick, the 27 illegal immigrants were picked up by a Danish container ship off Sicily when their flimsy vessel got into trouble.

But despite being advised that he could drop them off at the nearest port, the skipper of the Maersk Clementine decided to take them to Britain.

The extraordinary journey is the latest incident to expose the weakness of Britain's border controls. It is the first recorded incident of its kind in the country since the Forties and sparked fears that it could set a precedent for more ships to bring stranded asylum seekers all the way to these shores.

Lawyers and MPs last night called for a review of international maritime guidelines after the Home Office admitted it was powerless to stop captains taking similar action.

Humfrey Malins, the Shadow Home Affairs Minister, said: "This needs to be looked at immediately.

Maritime guidelines clearly need bringing up to date and strengthening."

A lawyer added:"It seems ridiculous that people rescued in the Med should be brought all the way to the UK. It clearly needs some careful study."

Last night, the 24 Somalis, two Tunisians and one Palestinian were in a detention centre. It is understood at least two children were on board.

The saga began last Tuesday when the Clementine rescued the 27 refugees fleeing North Africa.

Skipper Kjartan Davidsen radioed Felixstowe, his scheduled port of call, and told them that he planned to sail direct to the UK, despite being advised by the Immigration Service that he could let them off at a nearby port.

Four-and-a-half days later, the 110,000-ton container ship sailed into the Suffolk port where police and immigration officers were waiting.

A spokesman for the Home Office said: "The international maritime guidelines state that people rescued at sea should be dropped off at the nearest safe port or the next port of call.

"It is up to the master whether they are taken on to the next scheduled port of call or dropped off somewhere near where they are picked up."

One dock worker said: "It is a disgrace they were brought to Felixstowe after they were picked up so far away.

"British taxpayers who will have to pay to look after them until it is decided what to do." Another said: "We heard the ship just kept going because it didn't want to mess up its schedule."

The potentially deadly sea run is being increasingly used by asylum seekers and 10,000 landed on just one Italian island last year.

They can pay around £500 for a place but some boats get into difficulty and around 2,000 people are feared to have drowned last year.

Legal experts said maritime law covering asylum seekers was complex.

It was not clear whether the master of a vessel should drop the refugees off at the next available port or his next scheduled port. But once the immigrants had arrived at Felixstowe, the authorities had no option but to ensure their safety and process them. The immigrants were first held on the 347-metre vessel at the port's Trinity Terminal until they were interviewed by immigration officers.

Jakob Larsson, spokesman for the AP Moller-Maersk group, said the Maersk Clementine had sailed from Malaysia through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean and spotted the refugees off Sicily.

Mr Larsson said: "Our ship came across this little boat carrying the immigrants. They were signalling that they needed help and looked to be in some kind of distress.

"I don't know how long they had been at sea for or what kind of condition they were in. They were given food, water and accommodation and the decision was made to take them on to Felixstowe.

"It is a precedent in cases like this that the ship drops off people taken on board at the next port of call."

B.C. is a hub for human trafficking, report says
U.S. State Department blames Canada for allowing ‘modern-day slavery'
MARINA JIMÉNEZ
9 June 2005
The Globe and Mail

British Columbia has become an “attractive hub” for East Asian people traffickers who smuggle South Korean women through Canada to the United States, according to a U.S. State Department report that faults Canada for failing to stop this pernicious form of “modern-day slavery.”

The fifth annual Trafficking in Persons Report, released this week, gave Canada good marks overall for preventing and prosecuting human trafficking, but found that several hundred South Koreans have been smuggled through Canada to the United States in the past five years.

“The lack of visa requirement to enter Canada, lack of prosecutions and inability to determine the scope of the problem has made Canada, particularly British Columbia, an attractive hub for East Asian traffickers,” the 255-page report concluded. “The government of Canada has comprehensive anti-trafficking legislation, but this law has produced few results to date.”

The RCMP estimates that about 800 people are trafficked into Canada annually and an additional 1,500-2000 are trafficked through Canada to the United States. A spokesman said police do not share all the views expressed in the report.

It ranked 150 countries, and gave Canada “tier 1” status, meaning it meets the U.S. government's minimum requirements to combat trafficking. In past years, Canada was at “tier 2” status, alongside such countries as Sierra Leone and Ethiopia.

But this year, the U.S. State Department credited Canada with increasing efforts to prosecute and convict traffickers, noting that charges were brought against a trafficker in April, the first-ever under anti-trafficking legislation. In addition, there have been 19 trafficking convictions under other laws.

Detective Constable Jim Fisher, with the Vancouver Police intelligence section, says the city is a hub for South Koreans because they do not need a visa to come to Canada. Most are headed for Los Angeles, which has a large expatriate South Korean population. “Canada was moved from a tier 2 country to a tier 1 because of our increased law enforcement,” he noted. “Still, we haven't really come to grips with what it takes to properly police this phenomenon.”

He said Canada lacks agencies that will house and assist women who have been smuggled here, especially those involved in the sex trade. “We cannot move them to women's shelters because they are not in the country legally,” he said.

The report also mentioned the cancellation of Canada's blanket visa exemption for exotic dancers, noting that traffickers in Canada and elsewhere have abused this kind of program.

Globally, about 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year, of which about 80 per cent are women and children. Most victims are forced into commercial sexual exploitation, as well as involuntary servitude or debt bondage. “Victims of human trafficking pay a horrible price. Psychological and physical harm, including disease and stunted growth, often have permanent effects,” according to the report. “Another brutal reality of the modern-day sex trade is that its victims are frequently bought and sold many times over, often initially by family members.”

The report gave Bolivia, Burma, Jamaica, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela and Cuba the lowest scores. In Saudi Arabia, hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers from Asia and Africa fall into conditions of involuntary servitude and suffer physical and sexual abuse. Venezuela is faulted for failing to prevent children from being trafficked to mining camps in Guyana and to Colombia's armed insurgent groups. Human trafficking, an $11.8-billion industry, is defined as the recruitment and transportation of persons by use of threat or other means of coercion for the purpose of exploitation.

The report is supposed to raise awareness and stimulate government action, noted John Miller, senior adviser on the topic to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Countries that fail to comply may face sanctions including the withholding of some forms of U.S. foreign aid, although not humanitarian.

More than 160 clandestine immigrants rescued near Italian island

ROME, June 13 (AFP) - More than 160 clandestine immigrants were rescued Monday evening as their boat took on water 20 nautical miles south of the Italian island of Lampedusa.

The 163 boat people, including women and children, were sighted in the afternoon by a military reconnaissance plane which alerted the Italian coast guard.

The 15-meter (45-foot) wooden vessel was sinking when an Italian vessel came to its rescue.

The immigrants, whose nationality was not immediately known, were expected to arrive in the port of Lampedusa later in the evening.

Spanish police intercept boat with 49 African migrants
13 June 2005

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Spanish police stopped 49 North Africans trying to reach Spain illegally Monday in a small boat, officials said.

After crossing the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco overnight in a single-engine, dinghy-style boat, the 44 men and five women were spotted by police about 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) off the town of Tarifa at Spain's southern tip just before dawn, the Interior Ministry office in the provincial capital Cadiz said.

All of them are believed to be from northwest African countries.

The migrants were to be taken to the port city of Algeciras and were expected to be returned to their countries of origin.

Hundreds of Africans seeking a better life in Europe try to reach Spain weekly by crossing the Strait of Gibraltar packed into small boats. Many are caught, but officials estimate thousands manage to slip through each year. Many drown while making the crossing.

Spanish intercept 196 from immigrant boats

MADRID, June 17 (AFP) - Spanish maritime rescue authorities said Friday they had detained a total of 196 would-be African immigrants off the coast after four makeshift vessels tried to make it to shore on the coastline around Nerja in the deep south.

The number intercepted was the largest since 225 were detained off Tenerife in the Canaries in the first week of February.

In midweek, authorities discovered the bodies of a man and a woman believed to have come from a makeshift vessel which tried to reach Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands.

It was not known what became of the vessel.

On Wednesday, five babies were among a group of around 70 African would-be immigrants intercepted near Cadiz on the southeast Spanish mainland, while Monday saw at least 14 illegal migrants, including six young children, drown off Morocco's coast as they headed for Spain with around 100 people estimated on board a craft which capsized.

Every year, thousands of illegal immigrants from north Africa and the Middle East try to enter the European Union via the Strait of Gibraltar between Morocco and Spain, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic, or Italy's long coastline.

Eleven sub-Saharan Africans die trying to reach Spain, say survivors

FUERTEVENTURA, Spain, June 18 (AFP) - Eleven sub-Saharan migrants died of dehydration after spending almost a week at sea trying to reach Spain's Canary Islands aboard a makeshift vessel, survivors said on Saturday.

Maritime rescue authorities came to the aid of 13 survivors, who included a man in a coma and one woman, some 120 miles (180 kilometres) off the coast of Gran Canaria.

The survivors, who were taken to a reception centre, told Spanish rescuers that their fellow passengers had succumbed to dehydratation and that they had thrown their bodies overboard.

In a separate incident Saturday, rescue authorities said a vessel with 30 people on board had been intercepted five miles off the coast of Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, with three people requiring urgent medical treatment for dehydration after spending several days adrift.

Last year, Spanish authorities intercepted 15,675 migrants aboard 740 mainly makeshift vessels, either off the Canary Islands or Spain's southern coast. A total of 81 bodies were recovered but the true death toll is not known.

On Wednesday, five babies were among a group of around 70 African migrants intercepted near Cadiz on the southeast Spanish mainland, while on Monday at least 14 illegal migrants, including six young children, drowned off Morocco's coast after their craft capsized.

On Friday, maritime rescue authorities said they had detained 196 African migrants off the Spanish coast after four makeshift vessels tried to make it to shore on the coastline around Nerja in the far south.

Hundreds of would-be immigrants arrive on island south of Sicily
22 June 2005

ROME (AP) - Over three hundred would-be immigrants landed before dawn Wednesday on an island south of Sicily, bringing the total number of arrivals on Sicilian coasts to more than 856 over the last two days, a port official said.

The latest boat to arrive on the tiny island of Lampedusa was carrying 186 people, including 20 women and one child, said Francesco Ansaldi, a port official in Palermo, Sicily.

Another boat was intercepted carrying 124 people, Ansaldi said. Approaching the port, two of the group jumped overboard in an attempted escape, but were recovered by authorities, he said.

Among those who arrived between Tuesday and Wednesday were immigrants who identified themselves as being from North Africa, Pakistan and Iraq, Ansaldi said. He said it was not clear where they had started their voyage.

Ansaldi said the would-be immigrants were taken to a holding centre. More than 800 would-be immigrants are now staying at the holding center on Lampedusa, which is designed to hold just 190 people.

Thousands of immigrants risk the journey across the Mediterranean each year to try to reach Italy, often in ill-equipped boats. Arrivals increase during spells of good weather.

'Big Sister Ping' guilty of human smuggling
US jury convicts Hong Kong woman for operation in which 10 Chinese IIs died
Norma Connolly
24 June 2005
South China Morning Post

A Hong Kong woman known as the "mother of all snakeheads" has been convicted in a US court of financing a people-smuggling operation that led to the deaths of 10 Chinese illegal immigrants off the coast of New York in 1993.

Cheng Chui-ping, or "Big Sister Ping", was convicted on Wednesday on federal conspiracy charges for financing the Golden Venture steamer, which was carrying almost 300 Chinese when it ran aground off Queens. Ten died while trying to swim 180 metres to shore.

The US District Court of Manhattan jury also found Cheng, 56, guilty of money laundering and trafficking in the proceeds of ransom.

The jury deliberated for five days before finding her not guilty of a separate money-laundering charge, but failed to return a verdict on a charge of taking hostages. Judge Michael Mukasey ordered the jury to continue deliberating on that charge.

Cheng faces a maximum of 35 years in prison.

She fought against extradition from Hong Kong to the United States for three years after her June 2000 arrest by Narcotics Bureau officers at Chek Lap Kok airport. She was extradited to the US in June 2003.

The prosecution's case was built on wiretap evidence and testimony from convicted Chinese smugglers and the Fuk Ching triad organisation based in New York's Chinatown. At the trial, the defence sought to discredit the government witnesses by describing them - accurately - as murderers and extortionists.

Cheng's lead lawyer, Lawrence Hochheiser, said he was disappointed with the verdict and, while he admitted many times that his client ran an illegal bank, he always tried to distance her from the Golden Venture tragedy.

The ship was sent to Mombasa, Kenya, in 1993 to pick up nearly 300 Chinese immigrants who had been stranded when there were problems with another vessel. The Golden Venture then sailed for America, where it ran aground in the shallows off the Rockaways.

Fuk Ching gang members were supposed to help unload the vessel, but just as the ship approached New York, two of its members were killed in a fight on shore, one witness testified, leaving the gang in disarray.

The immigrants on board the Golden Venture were left to fend for themselves. In addition to those who died trying to swim ashore, dozens suffered hypothermia and injuries after jumping into the ocean.

At the height of her power, Cheng owned restaurants, a clothing store and real estate in Chinatown, as well as apartments in Hong Kong and a farm in South Africa. But her main business, prosecutors said, was an illicit multimillion-dollar banking network that stretched from East Asia to New York.

Hundreds of would-be immigrants arrive on tiny island south of Sicily
29 June 2005

ROME (AP) - Some 400 would-be immigrants from Africa landed on a tiny Italian island south of Sicily on Wednesday, bringing the number of arrivals over the last few days to more than 650, police said.

Air patrols spotted at least 200 more people on their way to Lampedusa Island, police said.

"It's a very heavy situation" on the island, Border Police Maj. Melchior Di Gregoli said by telephone from Palermo.

"There's a lot of confusion on such a tiny island, with so few people" to handle the flood of immigrants, he said, explaining why an exact count was not immediately possible.

Most of the migrants were from sub-Saharan Africa, he said.

Italian air patrols late Wednesday spotted one boat with some 200 aboard and another craft with about 25 people several hours south of Lampedusa, Di Gregoli said. Those boats were expected to reach the island some time Thursday.

On Wednesday afternoon, Italian coast guard patrols intercepted a boat carrying 143 immigrants off Lampedusa, the ANSA and Apcom news agencies said.

Earlier, at dawn, 269 immigrants -- including 55 women and 17 children -- landed on the island, ANSA said.

Police were investigating the identities of the migrants, suspecting a few of the smugglers might have been mingling among the masses, Di Gregoli said.

One of the migrants who landed, a young man with heart problems, was taken to a hospital, Di Gregoli said. Two pregnant women were also hospitalized, the news agencies reported.

The others were taken to a holding center, designed to hold 190 people, on Lampedusa, the agencies reported.

Thousands of immigrants risk the journey across the Mediterranean each year to try to reach Italy from north Africa, often in ill-equipped boats. Arrivals increase during spells of good weather.

Few of the migrants stay in Italy. Most of those who aren't caught make their way to other European countries, such as Germany, which have more established immigrant communities.

Would-be immigrants who can't prove they have a job or family waiting for them in Italy are ordered deported.

Boat Carrying Haitian Migrants Sinks; At Least 2 Dead
4 July 2005

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AP)--A boat carrying dozens of migrants fleeing Haiti sank off the island's coast, killing two people and leaving 11 others feared dead, a U.N. official said Monday.

The boat left the northern region of Cap-Haitien on Saturday and was heading toward Turks and Caicos, said Damian Onses-Cardona, spokesman for the U.N. mission in Haiti. Officials didn't know immediately what caused the boat to sink.

Haitian authorities found the bodies of two people and 11 others who disappeared were presumed dead, Onses-Cardona said. Twenty-three people survived, he said.

Elima Joseph, director-general of the mayor's office in Cape Haitien, put the number of deaths at 19. He said the victims were all from about 19 to 25 years old.

There was no description of the boat, but the U.N. spokesman noted that Haitians nearly always attempt to flee in rickety wooden vessels.

Attempts to leave Haiti illegally have risen dramatically since the February 2004 rebellion that ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country's first democratically elected leader, now in exile.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas, and most of the population is unemployed. Hundreds of people have been killed since the uprising, mostly in politically motivated clashes between street gangs, police and the 7,400-strong U.N. peacekeeping force.

Seven would-be immigrants feared dead off Malta
12 July 2005

VALLETTA, Malta (AP) - A boat carrying would-be immigrants capsized in stormy weather off Malta's coast, and seven people were feared dead, the Maltese armed forces said.

A tug boat pulling a tuna pen nearby picked up 13 survivors and alerted authorities, after the migrant boat overturned about 89 miles (143 kilometers) south of Malta on Monday, the armed forces said.

An army helicopter picked up another three men, who had held on to the tuna pen.

The three, who were taken to a hospital in Malta, said there had been a total of 23 men on board the boat. It was not immediately clear where they were from or from where they had departed.

An aircraft searched for more survivors, without success.

Each year thousands of illegal immigrants make the crossing from north Africa, often in fragile vessels that sink before reaching the Italian coasts or islands such as Malta that lie along the way.

Four Iranians trying to reach Britain intercepted off French coast

CALAIS, France, July 25 (AFP) - Four Iranians who tried to reach Britain aboard an inflatable raft were intercepted early Monday by French police near the Channel port of Calais, officials said.

The four men, aged 17 to 32, were found on a raft made for just two people, police said.

The illegal immigrants were spotted at around 3:00 am (0100 GMT) by a ship from Calais, about three miles (five kilometers) off the French coast, and were picked up by police a short time later.

The men, who were beginning to suffer from hypothermia, were taken to a Calais hospital for treatment. They told police they were Iranian nationals.

"They had no chance of succeeding" in reaching the British coast, police said. "If they had not been rescued, they would have capsized and drowned."

Dozens of illegal immigrants are constantly milling around Calais in hopes of crossing the English Channel to Britain, but their attempts rarely succeed.

Four years ago, a group almost reached British shores on board a regular boat before being intercepted by the British coast guard.

Spain intercepts boat with 33 would-be migrants from Africa
30 July 2005

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Spanish officials on Saturday intercepted a boat carrying 33 people, including two babies, who were trying to reach Spain illegally from North Africa.

The boat was spotted off the southern town of Algeciras, according to the Interior Ministry office in the provincial capital, Cadiz. On board were 25 men from Morocco, along with two men, four women and two babies from sub-Saharan Africa.

The would-be immigrants were taken off the boat, which was towed into Algeciras. The women and children, who were showing signs of hypothermia, were taken to a hospital there.

The migrants were expected to be returned to their countries of origin.

Hundreds of Africans seeking a better life in Europe try to reach Spain weekly by crossing the Strait of Gibraltar packed into small boats.

Many are caught, but officials estimate that thousands manage to slip through each year. Many drown while making the crossing.

Hmmm........very interesting reads. Thanks hkskyline.

Greek coast guard detains 125 illegal immigrants, recovers body of another who drowned
6 August 2005

ATHENS, Greece (AP) - The Greek coast guard detained 125 illegal immigrants and recovered the body of another who drowned on a remote part of a southern Aegean island, authorities said Saturday.

All detainees were reportedly in good health.

The migrants said they came from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Egypt.

The migrants and their abandoned 15-meter (49-foot) fishing boat were located early Saturday close to Lenta Bay on southern Crete, the Merchant Marine Ministry said.

Coast guard patrol boats combed the area for other illegal immigrants, but without result.

Thousands of illegal immigrants from Asia and Africa try to enter Greece every year, hoping to use the country as a gateway to European Union nations.

Four illegal passengers found dead in container at Dutch port

THE HAGUE, Aug 13 (AFP) - Dutch port authorities said Saturday they had found the bodies of four men who died inside a container while apparently trying to illegally reach Spain.

"The corpses were discovered when the container was delivered to a company" at the port of Rotterdam, the port security authority said.

"They were probably illegal passengers because they had brought food, drink and some tools. They probably boarded in Casablanca (Morocco), heading for Spain where they hoped to disembark," they added.

High temperatures in Spain where the container had remained several days probably caused the deaths of the four men, whose bodies were found on Friday, port authorities said.

A Dutch inquiry has been opened into their identity.

Body found dangling from boat which brought clandestine immigrants to Sicilian island
16 August 2005

ROME (AP) - The body of an African many was found dangling Tuesday from a boat that had brought clandestine immigrants to the tiny Sicilian island of Lampedusa, Italian authorities said.

Italian border police who join in patrols to spot illegal immigrants sailing toward Italy said the body was submerged in water and dangling from a rope tied to the bow of the vessel. A patrol boat was inspecting what had first seemed to be empty vessel adrift a few miles off Lampedusa when it spotted the body of the man, who appeared to be in his 20s.

Earlier, more than 110 clandestine immigrants who said they had sailed on the vessel had come ashore in Lampedusa, the border police said.

The immigrants claimed the man had drowned after getting caught in the rope while disembarking from the 15-meter-long (50-feet-long) boat, authorities said.

Magistrates in the Sicilian city of Agrigento were investigating the death, the police said.

Lost immigrant boat intercepted off Spanish islands

MADRID, Aug 16 (AFP) - Maritime rescue services have discovered a fishing boat carrying 95 would-be immigrants, many of them seriously ill and dehydrated, drifting near Spain's Canary Islands, officials said Tuesday.

Spanish rescue forces towed the vessel -- which officials estimated may have been adrift for up to two months -- to the Los Cristianos port in the southern part of the island of Tenerife, approximately 200 miles off the coast of northwest Africa.

Earlier reports based on testimony from the passengers, most of whom were from Ivory Coast, indicated that at least two of those aboard had died, but doctors who gained access to the vessel found no cadavers.

"In the end no bodies were found on board, but they could have been thrown into the ocean," a spokesperson for the police in Tenerife told AFP by telephone. "We must now gather witness testimony to confirm."

Doctors confirmed that many of the passengers appeared to be suffering from dehydration, but said no cases of "extreme gravity" had been immediately discovered.

Earlier reports from the local government office in Santa Cruz de Tenerife indicated that 68 of the passengers were ill, about 30 of them in serious condition.

The drifting boat had been spotted by maritime rescue services overnight Monday.

Local officials said the vessel was in very poor condition.

Jose Segura, a spokesperson for the local prefect, told Spanish journalists stationed in Tenerife that the boat had been found with neither motor nor oars, and with no food or water on board.

Most of the 95 passengers were from the Ivory Coast, although two individuals brought in for questioning said they were from Cape Verde, Segura said.

With the exception of one woman and two children aged one and 10, the rest of the passengers were men.

The boat was the fourth carrying a large number of clandestine immigrants to arrive in the Canary Islands since 2002.

In December 2002, authorities intercepted a Honduran-flagged vessel carrying 243 passengers from Senegal. The vessel was discovered in the Canary Islands, where it had stopped to restock while on its way to Greece.

Illegal immigrants regularly arrive in the Canary Islands in small wooden boats called "pateras" that carry a maximum of 50 passengers.

Castro Blames U.S. for Missing Migrants
By ANITA SNOW
26 August 2005

HAVANA (AP) - Cuban leader Fidel Castro claimed Friday that U.S. policies were responsible for the latest tragedy to befall Cubans trying to reach American shores -- 31 people believed killed in the Florida Straits.

The Cuban are missing and feared dead after their overcrowded boat capsized, officials said.

President Fidel Castro appeared on state-run television to point the finger at an American law that allows Cubans to apply for permanent residency if they reach the U.S., saying it encourages dangerous, illegal migration.

"Lives have been lost for the last 40 years since they created that law," he said, referring to the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act. "This policy is absurd."

But the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, the American mission here, rejected the Cuban government's statement, calling it "a cynical attempt to deflect blame from itself."

"Those who died did so fleeing Cuba's political repression and government-inflicted impoverishment," the Interests Section said in a statement distributed to international journalists.

According to Castro, it's the U.S. policy that has created a lucrative business in which traffickers charge up to $10,000 per Cuban migrant.

The U.S. Coast Guard on Wednesday suspended the search for the missing Cubans, which began after a merchant vessel rescued three people north of Matanzas, Cuba, three days earlier. No one else was found.

The survivors, two women and a man, were being treated in Cuba for burns and dehydration after five days at sea. The U.S. Interests Section complained in its response Friday that local American diplomats had not been allowed to interview the survivors.

A U.S. Coast Guard spokesman said earlier this week that at least 200 people are known to have died in attempts to reach the United States by sea in the past five years. Many more have likely perished.

Europe: 11 migrants drown, 143 captured after boat discovered off Sicily
John Hooper, Rome
12 September 2005
The Guardian

Eleven people died on the coast of Sicily yesterday as they were being smuggled into Italy. It was the latest in a string of tragedies in an area by migrant traffickers for landing their human cargos. Seven men suspected of organising the operation were arrested, accused of manslaughter, the carabinieri said.

The bodies of the dead were found on a beach and in shallow waters near the town of Gela, on the south of the island. The local coastguard chief, Raffaele Macauda, said all the dead had drowned. Another 143 people were found ashore or on the boat that had carried them across the Mediterranean. Survivors said they were Eritreans and had set off three days earlier from the coast of Libya. Last night, the carabinieri were still looking for six migrants who were believed to have escaped after reaching the shore.

Early yesterday, passersby noticed an old fishing boat grounded on a sandbank, about 30 metres off a lonely stretch of coast between Gela and Licata. An inflatable launch was ferrying people ashore.

Thousands set off every year from north Africa in rickety open vessels, hoping to reach Italy. The boats, meant for inshore fishing, are not intended for what can be a hazardous trip. Italy's Refugee Council last year estimated that more than 5,000 people had died trying to reach Europe since 1996. Two other 10-12 metre boats of the sort used for trafficking were seen in Italian waters yesterday, each laden with around 150 people.

Greek coast guard rescues 23 migrants thrown overboard

ATHENS, Sept 15 (AFP) - The Greek coast guard on Thursday rescued 23 migrants from the sea off the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos and caught a Turkish suspected member of a people-smuggling ring, Greece's merchant marine ministry said.

The Turkish citizen was found hiding in bushes near the coastal area where the migrants were discovered, along with the speedboat that brought them to the Greek shores, a ministry spokesman told AFP.

"It seems he was communicating with the captain of the speedboat, perhaps offering guidance," the spokesman said.

The Lesbos authorities are still looking for the speedboat captain, who fled after running the vessel aground. The pursuing coast guard forces saw him throw some of the migrants overboard before abandoning the speedboat.

The 23 migrants identified themselves as Algerian, but carried no documents, the spokesman said.

Authorities detain 25 would-be immigrants, including a newborn, in waters south of Sicily
22 October 2005

ROME (AP) - Italian police detained a boatload of 25 would-be immigrants, including a newborn, in waters south of Sicily on Saturday, a port official said.

A fishing boat first noticed the would-be immigrants near the tiny Sicilian island of Lampedusa and alerted the coast guard and Italy's financial police, said the official in Palermo, who added that he was not authorized to release his name.

He said one of the would-be immigrants was ill and had to be hospitalized, but was not in danger of dying. The others were taken to a holding center in Lampedusa. He said the boat's passengers included six women and a newborn.

News agencies reported that the would-be immigrants were Somalians and that one of them died during the sea crossing. A body was recovered from the sea later in the day, but the port official said it was not one of the boat's passengers.

Lampedusa has been overwhelmed in recent months by nearly daily arrivals of boats full of passengers who pay smugglers in hopes of slipping into Italy undetected.

Unless the passengers have the proper documents to live in Italy, they will be ordered repatriated although many of them slip away during the process and make it to the Italian mainland, authorities say.

Most migrants attempt to rejoin families or find work in northern Europe, which generally has a larger immigrant population than Italy.

Earlier this month, a reporter with an Italian magazine posed as an Iraqi Kurd and spent several days at the center in Lampedusa. He alleged in his ensuing article that migrants were being kept in inhumane conditions.

Nearly 600 illegal immigrants intercepted south of Sicily

ROME, Oct 25 (AFP) - Two more boatloads of illegal immigrants have been intercepted by security forces near the island of Lampedusa, south of Sicily, taking to 600 the number of migrants picked up in Italian waters Tuesday, maritime authorities said.

"Two boats crammed with about 300 people were spotted this afternoon (Tuesday), one about 20 nautical miles from Lampedusa, the other about 60 miles south of the island," customs officer Colonel Marcello Marzocca told AFP.

The would-be immigrants would be taken to the overcrowded secure reception centre on Lampedusa, which is the favoured landfall of European-bound migrants travelling from Libya and Tunisia.

The latest arrivals will join 111 people, including 14 women and three babies, who arrived on a boat in Lampedusa's port on earlier Tuesday.

A few hours later, a freighter alerted authorities to another vessel with 170 people aboard 43 nautical miles from Syracuse, on Sicily's southeast coast.

Two tugs and three small boats were dispatched to bring the ship to port.

More than 15,000 immigrants have landed illegally on Italian soil between January 1 and September 29 this year, compared with 9,950 for the same period last year.

Malta recovers bodies of nine drowned clandestine immigrants

VALETTA, Oct 25 (AFP) - Malta's armed forces said Tuesday they had recovered the bodies of nine suspected clandestine immigrants who had drowned off the coast.

Authorities first received a report on Sunday of a body floating in the water and then found a capsized six-metre (20 foot) boat, capable of carrying 20 people, and recovered five bodies, one of them wearing a lifejacket.

A further four bodies were found Tuesday, two by the navy to the north of the island with two others reported by the captain of a ferry travelling to the neighbouring island of Gozo.

Authorities said that bad weather was hampering the continuing search.

The Mediterranean island state, which joined the European Union last year, is a popular destination for clandestine immigrants seeking to enter Europe.

In 24-hour period, Spain intercepts hundreds from Africa trying to reach Spain by boat
1 November 2005

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Hundreds of people trying to emigrate illegally to Spain by boat from Africa were intercepted over a 24-hour period, authorities said Tuesday. Two bodies were recovered, police said.

One boat was intercepted off the coast of Almeria in the south with 50 people and the two bodies on board, a police spokesman said.

Two other boats were picked up off Almeria with 134 people on board, he said.

The coast guard was deployed Tuesday morning to intercept a boat off the Canary island of Fuerteventura, the news agency ACN News said. Forty people were on that vessel, the report said.

Earlier, two small boats were stopped off the coast of Granada in the south, one with 31 people sheltering under sheets of plastic and another with 33 people who were trying to land near the port of Salobrena, El Mundo newspaper reported.

Every year, thousands of people, mostly Moroccans and sub-Saharan Africans, try to emigrate illegally to Europe by crossing the sea to Spain on rickety boats.

Many drown in the attempt. Among those who make it across, most are detained and deported.

110 Illegal Migrants Detained Trying To Enter Puerto Rico
6 November 2005

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP)--Maritime authorities on Sunday detained some 110 illegal migrants trying to reach Puerto Rico's northern coast in a rickety boat, police said.

Puerto Rican coastal agents spotted the migrants before dawn as they approached a beach near Manati, 30 miles west of the U.S. Caribbean territory's capital of San Juan, police said in a statement.

The agents alerted U.S. Coast Guard officials, who intercepted the 38-foot and turned over the migrants to local authorities, police said.

Police didn't specify the nationality of the migrants, however, the area is a frequent landing point for people from the Dominican Republic, which lies about 70 miles (112 kilometers) west of Puerto Rico.

A coast guard spokesman couldn't immediately confirm the incident.

The migrants were all in good health, police said. Illegal migrants typically are deported shortly after being detained.

Thousands of Dominicans risk the journey across the rough Mona Passage in search of better economic prospects in Puerto Rico. The Dominican Republic has been slowly emerging from a punishing economic recession.

Cubans involved in alleged smuggling trip returned to island
12 November 2005

MIAMI (AP) - The U.S. Coast Guard repatriated 34 Cubans who were rescued from a speedboat that capsized in the Straits of Florida in an alleged smuggling operation.

The Cubans were on an overloaded 27-foot boat that capsized Nov. 5 in rough seas about 65 miles south of Key West.

The bodies of two women who drowned were found beneath the boat. Family members have identified the women as Luisa Cardentey, 60, and Isabel Machado, 74.

The Coast Guard has said the Cubans were part of a smuggling trip, and details of an investigation have been forwarded to the U.S. Attorney's Office. But relatives of Cardentey and Machado denied the smuggling accusations and said everyone on board was related to the dead women.

Federal authorities questioned the boat's captain, Jorge Ernesto Leyva, but released him without charging him, said Matthew Archambeault, an attorney for the families. The relatives had asked a federal judge to allow the 34 survivors into the United States so a full investigation of the incident could take place.

Under U.S. policy, Cuban migrants intercepted at sea are usually returned to Cuba, while those who reach U.S. soil are generally allowed to stay.

A total of 79 Cubans were returned to the island this week, including the group of 34, according to the Coast Guard.

U.S. Coast Guard suspends search for missing Cuban migrant
18 November 2005

MIAMI (AP) - The U.S. Coast Guard has suspended its search for a Cuban migrant believed to have drowned while attempting to reach the United States aboard a homemade raft, the latest in a string of deadly migration incidents.

A Cuban found off Summerland Key, Florida, early Wednesday said that five others in a group that had left Cuba a week before were missing. A Coast Guard helicopter found four of them on an inner-tube raft less than a mile (kilometer) off Ramrod Key, Florida, but the fifth was not among them.

The surviving migrants said that the fifth in their group fallen off the raft and drowned, according to a Coast Guard statement. The search for that migrant was suspended Friday.

The remaining migrants were being cared for on a Coast Guard cutter. Under U.S. policy, most Cubans intercepted at sea are returned to their homeland, while those who reach U.S. soil normally are permitted to stay.

Two Cuban women drowned Nov. 5 when the speedboat they were in capsized south of Key West, Florida, trapping them underneath. Also that day, the bodies of three Haitian women washed ashore in Pompano Beach, Florida, as part of an illegal immigration attempt, authorities said.

On Oct. 12, 6-year-old Julian Villasuso drowned when the smuggler's boat he was in capsized en route from Cuba to Florida. Two men pleaded guilty in that case to federal smuggling charges and are awaiting sentencing.

Nine boat migrants drown trying to reach shore on Sicily's southern coast
By ROMINA SPINA
18 November 2005

ROME (AP) - Nine migrants drowned while trying to reach shore after their boat hit rough weather off Sicily's southern coast on Friday and more were feared dead, port authorities said. More than 170 migrants survived.

The boat washed up before dawn just off the coast near Ragusa after rescuers were unable to reach it because of bad weather, said Giuseppe Giacobbe, an official from the port authority in the Sicilian town of Catania.

The nine men were thought to have drowned trying to swim ashore and their bodies were found washed up on the beach or floating nearby, officials said.

"The conditions were terrible, there were very high waves," said Michele Maltese, a port official in nearby Pozzallo.

Officials said the boat was found empty and more than 170 survivors were picked up on land, including three women and five minors.

Italian TV station Sky TG24 showed footage of bodies lying under blankets and being loaded into coffins on the beach.

Survivors told authorities they were from North Africa and that there had been some 200 people on board, Giacobbe said.

Searches were underway Friday morning to look for more survivors, despite continuing bad weather, Giacobbe said.

Maltese authorities alerted their Italian counterparts late Thursday that the boat was headed for Italy, but the Italians had been unable to intercept the boat during the night because of strong winds and rough seas, Giacobbe said. The Maltese said the boat had refused their offers of help.

Thousands of would-be immigrants attempt the journey each year, many in ill-equipped vessels. The trips are often organized by human traffickers operating in north African countries including Libya and Tunisia.

Separately, police in Sicily and in the southern city of Bari arrested six Africans accused of smuggling 41 migrants last month from Libya to Italy, authorities said Friday. The men, from Nigeria and Sudan, were arrested at a holding center in Bari, where they had been hiding among the would-be immigrants, Cmdr. Luigi Liguori said.

122 illegal immigrants arrested on Greek island

ATHENS, Nov 18 (AFP) - Greek coastguards arrested 122 illegal immigrants after their boat ran aground on the south-western Greek island of Kithira, the merchant navy ministry announced Friday.

The immigrants, all of them men whose nationality was not disclosed, had just disembarked from the 20-metre boat. Five were taken to hospital suffering from exhaustion while the others were detained in schoolhouses on the island.

The boat "with a name written in Arabic script", was apparently en route from Turkey to Italy, according to initial statements from the migrants, the ministry said.

And people say Australia's racist because Customs and the Navy stop these boats and order them to turn back (or detain and deport them at our expense). At least boats have stopped coming in, maybe they realised that there is next to no human settlement along the west and northern coasts.

Authorities in Sicily arrest two men suspected of trying to smuggle immigrants into Italy
19 November 2005

RAGUSA, Sicily (AP) - Police have arrested two men suspected of trying to smuggle into Italy about 200 migrants whose boat tipped over in rough weather off Sicily's southern coast, port authorities said Saturday. At least nine people died in the accident.

The ANSA news agency reported that the two men, Mohsen Adel Mahmoud Wuafy, 29, from Egypt, and Aoud Assan Abdellal, 42, from Iraq, were charged with manslaughter and human trafficking.

Meanwhile, the search continued for the bodies of those who were missing in the waters near the city of Ragusa following Friday's accident, said Cmdr. Nazzareno Lagana of the port authority in Catania.

"If there were anymore survivors we probably would have found them by now," Lagana said.

The boat washed up before dawn Friday just off the coast near Ragusa after rescuers were unable to reach it because of bad weather, officials said.

The nine men were thought to have drowned trying to swim ashore and their bodies were found washed up on the beach or floating nearby. One of the nine might have been a smuggler, Lagana said.

More than 170 migrants survived, and survivors told authorities they were from North Africa and that there had been some 200 people on board.

Thousands of would-be immigrants attempt the journey each year, many in ill-equipped vessels. The trips are often organized by human traffickers operating in north African countries including Libya and Tunisia.

You are a looser.

Greek coastguards tow boat with 150 migrants, arrest crew members

ATHENS, Oct 24 (AFP) - Greek coastguards have towed a boat containing 150 would-be immigrants to the island of Crete and arrested three crew members on smuggling charges, the country's merchant marine department said on Monday.

The immigrants initially claimed to be Palestinian, but a preliminary investigation indicated that the majority are Egyptian.

The group also included 24 Iraqis and six Indians, a ministry press office source told AFP.

Three of the boat's crew will be taken later on Monday to a prosecutor in the town of Chania on smuggling charges, the ministry officer said.

Also on board the 22-metre (73-foot) boat was the dead body of a man identified by the others as the captain of the vessel. The cause of his death was unknown.

The boat had put out a distress signal on Sunday evening when sailing off the southern coast of Crete, the ministry said.

The coastguard towed the boat into the port of Palaiohora, on the southwest of the island, where they found the dead man on board. Officials Monday described the man only as "foreign".

The other passengers, men aged from around 18 to 35 who said they were Palestinians, were taken to a community centre at the port to await a decision on where they would go next.

The men said they had left the Palestinian coast off Rafah eight hours previously and were heading in the direction of Italy, the ministry said.

Italy finds more bodies from stricken smuggler boat

ROME, Nov 23 (AFP) - Italian authorities said Wednesday they had recovered the bodies of five more illegal immigrants who perished when a smuggler boat carrying scores of people was hit by a violent storm off Sicily.

The find brought to 14 the total number of bodies recovered after the 16-metre (53-foot) vessel got into trouble off the Sicilian coast last week.

"The toll has risen to 14 for the time being, but we are continuing our searches," a coastguard official told AFP.

Italian authorities on Friday recovered 177 survivors from the stricken boat.

Witness estimates have suggested that as many as 20 people may have died.

An Italian tugboat sent to meet the vessel had been forced back by the storm, Italian officials said earlier.

The Italian coast is a prime destination for illegal immigrants from North Africa and such incidents, usually involving poorly maintained boats, are frequent.

Eleven people died in a similar incident in September. A Catholic non-governmental organisation, Caritas, estimates that at least 500 people have died in similar incidents since the start of the year.

Italy finds 22 bodies from stricken smuggler boat

ROME, Nov 25 (AFP) - Italian authorities said Wednesday they had recovered 22 bodies of illegal African immigrants who died when a smuggler boat was hit by a storm off Sicily.

The toll was increased from 14 two days ago as the search continued after the 16-metre (53-foot) vessel got into trouble off the Sicilian coast last week.

Italian authorities last Friday recovered 177 survivors from the stricken boat.

The Italian coast is a prime destination for illegal immigrants from North Africa and such incidents, usually involving poorly maintained boats, are frequent.

Eleven people died in a similar incident in September. A Catholic non-governmental organisation, Caritas, estimates that at least 500 people have died in similar incidents since the start of the year.

Sicilian officials find bodies of four migrants, raising toll from accident to 24
26 November 2005

ROME (AP) - Sicilian port authorities recovered the bodies of four more migrants Saturday, raising the number of people killed when their boat hit rough weather a week ago to 24, officials said.

Danilo Scandurla, an official from the port authority in Catania, said three bodies were found on beaches along the sea coast near Pozzallo, on Sicily's southern coast, while divers recovered the fourth in the water.

The boat hit bad weather about a week ago, forcing its occupants to abandon the ship and swim to shore. More than 170 migrants survived, and survivors told authorities they were from North Africa and that there had been some 200 people on board.

Thousands of hopeful immigrants make the trip between North Africa and Italy's southern coast each year on ill-equipped vessels. The trips are often organized by human traffickers operating in north African countries including Libya and Tunisia.

Police have arrested two men suspected of trying to smuggle the migrants. A third alleged smuggler was suspected of being among the dead.

:weirdo: whats the whole point of this thread?.. this thread is pointless, i dont see whats good about posting these kinds of news

The US government is extremely concerned about illegal aliens entering the country through its ports. Several years ago there were a few high profile cases of migrants dying in containers and the Americans had no idea how many were slipping in. Recent terrorism scares have raised the possibility of bombs or terrorists reaching the US by sea. In fact, the US is now forcing some foreign ports to scrutinize outbound cargo more.

Meanwhile, richer European countries bordering the Mediterranean are now seeing a tide of poor African migrants reaching their shores. Spain has traditionally been a popular destination since it is so close to Morocco. From there, illegal African aliens filter throughout the rest of Western Europe now that the borders between EU countries have disappeared.

This type of news is very relevant amidst all the security issues in many parts of the world. Notice a recurring theme amidst many of the posts here. There are a few areas of the world with a chronic human smuggling problem.

Rescue teams search for immigrants missing at sea off southern coast of Spain
27 November 2005

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Rescue teams on Sunday scoured the sea off the southern coast of Almeria in a search for 22 illegal immigrants feared dead after their small rubber boat capsized in bad weather, officials said.

The boat, which had been carrying more than 60 people, capsized due to bad weather on Saturday morning, 14 nautical miles (22 kilometers) from the shore, the Interior Ministry in the provincial capital of Almeria said.

Police rescued 44 immigrants -- 36 men and eight women -- after they were alerted by several mobile telephone calls from one of the people on board, the ministry said. Their nationalities were not immediately released.

Rescue teams in helicopters and boats searched for the immigrants throughout Saturday, and two boats were dispatched again to the area Sunday.

Every year, thousands of people, mostly Moroccans and sub-Saharan Africans, try to emigrate illegally to Europe by crossing the sea to Spain on rickety boats. Many drown in the attempt. Most of those who do make it across are detained and deported.

Many undertake the voyage to southern Spain across the treacherous Strait of Gibraltar. Others head to Spain's Canary Islands off Africa's west coast.

Stranded would-be immigrants rescued by cruise ship off Morocco

ROME, Dec 6 (AFP) - Thirty-six would-be immigrants to Spain from west Africa were rescued by an Italian cruise ship after spending a week adrift in the Atlantic Ocean off Morocco, the cruise ship company MSC said Tuesday.

The Melody was on its way to Rio de Janeiro via Dakar when it spotted a small boat adrift near the Moroccan coast.

The Melody approached the boat to find 36 men who said they had had nothing to eat or drink for many days because their motor had failed.

The captain alerted the nearest authorities in Nouakchott, Mauritania, but after waiting for the coast guard for five hours, brought the men on board to give them food.

The men said they had left Guinea-Bissau three weeks earlier with the intention of reaching Spain, but became stranded after two weeks.

They are currently in Senegal.

Coast Guard picks up 311 Haitian migrants at sea, sends them home

MIAMI, Dec 14 (AFP) - US authorities Wednesday repatriated 311 Haitians picked up at sea as they tried to make their way illegally to the United States, the US Coast Guard announced.

The would-be migrants were spotted on a sailing freighter beached on Anguilla Cay in the Bahamas Monday. They were transferred onto a Coast Guard vessel.

The Haitians were sent back to Port-au-Prince on Wednesday, the Coast Guard said, adding that several of the migrants said they knew they had been headed to the United States, but were not aware of their exact destination.

So far this year, the US Coast Guard has intercepted 1,716 Haitians at sea. In all a total of 9,578 migrants were picked up at sea, most of them from the Dominican Republic and Cuba.

Tensions Rise As More Flee Cuba for U.S.
BY ABBY GOODNOUGH
Terry Aguayo contributed reporting from Miami for this article
18 December 2005
The New York Times

MIAMI, Dec. 17 -- The number of Cubans intercepted at sea while trying to reach the United States is at its highest level since tens of thousands took to the Florida Straits on makeshift rafts and in small boats in the 1994 exodus sanctioned by President Fidel Castro.

The sharp rise -- and an increase in clashes between would-be immigrants and the Coast Guard -- are inflaming tensions over a policy enacted in response to the 1994 migration that allows Cubans without visas to stay if they reach American soil but turns back those caught at sea.

The ''wet foot, dry foot'' policy, which does not apply to any other immigrant group, is being blamed by critics for at least 39 deaths this year in the Florida Straits and is testing the resolve of the Coast Guard, which the critics say has become too aggressive in enforcing the restrictions.

In offering a permanent escape to Cubans who make it here, they say, the policy encourages them to risk their lives.

Coast Guard data show that as of Friday, 2,683 Cubans had been intercepted at sea this year, nearly double the number for all of 2004. And while the high season for migrant crossings, when the sailing tends to be smoothest, is already past, scores have kept trying the journey despite the perils.

Some of the migrants, hoping to avoid confrontations with Coast Guard patrols, are taking unusual routes, to the United States Virgin Islands and the Gulf Coast of Florida. A fast-growing number -- including 6,744 counted by Customs and Border Patrol in the fiscal year that ended in September -- are entering the United States by slipping across the Mexican border, often after sailing some 500 miles to Honduras from Cuba.

The State Department says the new wave of migrants is a result of increasingly repressive policies in Cuba, the island's crumbling economy and Mr. Castro's refusal to let more Cubans sign up for a lottery under which the United States is supposed to grant 20,000 visas a year.

But some Cuban-Americans in South Florida say that new limits on their visits and on the money they can send to relatives on the island, imposed by the Bush administration last year, have led to greater desperation among many Cubans.

Ever more aggressive smuggling has also played a role. Far more Cubans are making it to American shores, including, for example, 14 migrants discovered near a parking lot on Marco Island, Fla., a few days after Thanksgiving. About 2,530 completed the journey to South Florida in the last fiscal year, compared with 954 the year before, according to the Border Patrol.

''The message to Cuban families is that if you don't want to wait in line, your relatives in Miami can pay $8,000 and you've got a good chance to make it here,'' said Philip Peters, a Cuba analyst at the Lexington Institute, a research group in Washington. ''It really is a glaring exception in the whole homeland security policy.''

One incident this fall perhaps best encapsulated the growing resolve of Cubans to slip into this country and of the federal government to keep them out.

Florida television audiences watched as government agents struggled to keep 10 migrants in a homemade metal vessel from reaching the beach just north of Miami after a Customs and Border Protection boat bumped it hard enough to spill some of the migrants overboard. Coast Guard boats had also sprayed the vessel with a hose and tried stalling its engine with a rope during a prolonged showdown with the migrants, all men.

''We are needlessly putting innocent lives at risk,'' said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, which helps Cuban and other migrants pursue asylum claims. ''Our Coast Guard is being put in the untenable position of endangering lives in order to keep people from reaching our shores.''

Luis Diaz, a spokesman for the Coast Guard in Miami, said that the agency's tactics had not become more aggressive but that unlike in the past, it was working closely with agencies like Customs and Border Protection since becoming part of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002.

''We are working better and smarter with our partners,'' Mr. Diaz said. ''Before we were in Homeland Security we had different radios, different frequencies, and now we are working together behind the same equipment.''

The number of Cubans being intercepted is by far the highest since 1994, when 37,000 took to the Florida Straits after Mr. Castro announced that his government would no longer stop boats or rafts leaving the island. It was a hostile move against the United States and a way for Mr. Castro to divert attention from his domestic problems and quell an uprising against him on the island, similar to when he let 125,000 Cubans leave in the Mariel boatlift of 1980.

The 1994 exodus led the United States and Cuba to agree on the wet foot, dry foot policy in 1995, ending this country's longtime practice of admitting all Cuban migrants as refugees.

Many of the Cuban migrants are paying thousands of dollars, often provided by relatives here, to smugglers who whisk them across the Florida Straits on speedboats, several of which capsized this year. In one such case, a 6-year-old boy drowned after the boat he was riding in fled a Coast Guard cutter in October. In another, an Antiguan merchant ship rescued three migrants who said that 31 others had drowned when their 28-foot boat overturned in August.

Others are still trying the dangerous trip on rafts or vessels of their own making, some of which are spotted by fishing boats and cruise ships that report them to the Coast Guard. Those intercepted at sea can get preliminary asylum interviews aboard Coast Guard cutters, but only a few are deemed eligible for second interviews. They get sent to the United States Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

If found to have a credible fear of persecution, they still cannot come to the United States and instead are resettled in other countries like Spain and Australia.

Only about 2.5 percent of Cubans intercepted at sea in the last fiscal year were taken to Guantanamo and considered for asylum, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Even of those, most were eventually returned to Cuba.

Even as the number of Cuban migrants balloons and President Bush proposes new laws to curb illegal immigration, there is no plan to re-examine the wet foot, dry foot policy, said Janelle Hironimus, a State Department spokeswoman. She said Mr. Castro's policies were behind the increase in migration efforts.

''Castro's repression of his own people and refusal to allow the basic freedoms enjoyed by people everywhere have led to a mass migration by the Cuban people,'' Ms. Hironimus said.

But some Cuban-Americans in South Florida say Mr. Bush's refusal to make exceptions to the current policy is evidence that he is deserting the anti-Castro cause.

They were particularly angered by a case last month in which Jorge Ernesto Leyva, who had recently emigrated from Cuba, drove a rented speedboat to Havana from Key West, packed the 27-foot boat with 37 relatives and tried to return here clandestinely. But the sea turned violent and as the passengers were bailing water, a Coast Guard helicopter spotted the boat and directed a cutter to intercept it.

The Coast Guard crew had transferred only about half of the migrants to its cutter when the speedboat capsized, trapping two grandmothers and a 9-year-old girl underneath. The girl's mother dived under the boat to rescue the girl, but nobody saved the two women -- even though Mr. Leyva and others on his boat said they begged the Coast Guard crew to do so.

Mr. Diaz, the Coast Guard spokesman, said rescue diving was not part of the Coast Guard's standard procedures.

''People ask us, 'Go underneath the hull,' '' he said. ''Well, we don't carry divers. If our personnel jumped in the water, then no one is going to be manning the ship. We have just enough persons to run a vessel. We don't have extra bodies to do things some of these relatives want us to do.''

Mr. Leyva and a teenager on the boat were brought to Florida because they had been admitted previously. The others asked permission to attend the funerals of the drowned women, who were 74 and 60. But the Department of Homeland Security denied their request and returned them to Cuba.

''We are concerned about the policy and the effect it has on the way the Coast Guard does its business,'' said Matthew Archambeault, a lawyer for Mr. Leyva and his family. ''We do feel they sacrifice safety to keep people away from dry land.''

Four dead, 40 missing as immigrant boat sinks off Mauritania

NOUAKCHOTT, Dec 19 (AFP) -

At least four people died when a boat carrying 45 Africans seeking illegal entry into Europe capsized off the coast of Mauritania, the country's head of marine affairs said Monday.

Almost all the rest are unaccounted for.

"A boat carrying clandestines, mostly Senegalese, was shipwrecked about 10 days ago in the area of Lagouira, on the border between Morocco and Mauritania," Ba Madine said.

"Only four bodies and two women who escaped have so far been recovered. The others are either missing or managed to get away," he said.

The two female survivors reported 45 people were on the boat that had been turned away by Morocco into Mauritanian waters, Madine said.

More than 600 illegal migrants intercepted off Sicily

ROME, Dec 21 (AFP) - Italian customs officials intercepted more than 600 illegal immigrants on four boats off the southern coast of Sicily Wednesday, authorities said.

"The first boat carrying 177 people was detected this morning close to the island of Lampedusa", which lies between Sicily and the Libyan coast, Guardia di Finanza customs Colonel Marcello Marzocca told AFP.

Three other boats with about 480 people on board were reported to the authorities later and intercepted by coast guards.

ANSA news agency said that the 177 people on the first boat were taken to a transit center near Lampedusa airport which accommodates a maximum 200.

The four boats apparently set sail from north Africa, notably Libya, Marzacocca said.

Italy has proved a magnet for migrants trying to gain access to the European Union.

Since the start of the year more than 15,000 people have been detained after trying to illegally land on the southern coast of EU member Italy, according to the interior ministry in Rome.

Meanwhile, the charitable Sant'Egidio religious community in Rome said more than 2,000 migrants have drowned while trying to reach the Italian coast aboard typically unseaworthy craft since 1990.

"The vast majority -- 90 percent -- of them drowned in the waters of the Adriatic or in the Sicilian channel when their vessels were shipwrecked," the community's Daniela Pompei told a news conference.

Sant'Egidio said its figures did not take into account the "hundreds and hundreds of people who died in the Sahara desert trying to reach Libya," the most popular launching point for illegals trying to reach Italy.

It criticised Italian immigration policy, saying conditions had become more difficult for migrants arriving and staying in Italy.

"Italy devotes 80 percent of its immigration budget in fighting clandestine immigration, but only 20 percent is spent on integration," said.

In one of the worst incidents in 2005, the bodies of at least 22 people were recovered from a Sicilian beach after their boat capsized. Eleven people drowned in another incident in the same area in September.

Around 30,000 people demonstrated in Rome earlier this month to call for a repeal of Italy's current immigration law, a key criticism of which is that it links the duration of a residence permit to the length of the work contract.

The protestors also demanded the closure of holding centers used to house illegal immigrants while they are waiting to be sent back to their homelands.

Two African stowaways dead in Belgian port

BRUSSELS, Dec 21 (AFP) - Two illegal stowaways were found dead in the water Wednesday in the Belgian port of Antwerp, after arriving by boat from Nigeria, prosecutors said.

The two were among about 10 illegal immigrants found in a lock off the main port, after having arrived from Lagos, said a prosecution spokesman cited by the VRT Flemish-language television station.

Emergency services were searching for other stowaways, who were believed to have spent the 10-day trip from the African port city in an unheated machine room on board a cargo vessel, he said.

The immigrants were only lightly dressed, in chilly winter temperatures in the northern Belgian port, Europe's biggest after Rotterdam. The eight survivors were taken to hospital.

The RTBF French-language television station said that the two dead immigrants had died during the trip and their bodies were thrown overboard on arrival. No further details were immediately available.

We get loads of Africans here in Santos!

108 Haitians, 51 Cubans repatriated
28 December 2005

MIAMI (AP) - The Coast Guard returned 159 illegal Haitian and Cuban migrants to their homelands Wednesday, officials said.

The 51 Cuban migrants were returned to Bahia de Cabanas, Cuba and 108 Haitian migrants were repatriated to Cap Haitian, Haiti on Wednesday, said Coast Guard Lt. Petty Officer James Judge in Miami.

Coast Guard crews intercepted three separate Cuban vessels and two Haitian vessels between Dec. 15 and 26.

The number of captured migrants spiked to 2,834 in 2005 from 1,499 the previous year. It is the highest number since a mass exodus from Cuba in 1994 when 37,191 migrants were intercepted, said Judge.

Immigrant boat capsizes off Sicily

ROME, Dec 26 (AFP) - A boat carrying almost 200 illegal immigrants capsized off the Italian island of Sicily on Monday after a voyage through stormy seas, Ansa news agency said.

The 179 passengers, including 10 women, swam to the shore after the accident off the coast between the southern towns of Pozzala and Gela, it said.

The coastguard was scouring the seas for any others who failed to make it to the safety.

Initial identity checks on the immigrants showed they were from Algeria, Tunisia and the Middle East.

Two other boats carrying around 200 would-be illegal immigrants were intercepted off the island of Lampedusa, south of Sicily, port officials there said.

Italy has proved a magnet for migrants trying to gain access to the European Union.

Since the start of the year more than 15,000 people have been detained after trying to illegally land on the southern coast of EU member Italy, according to the interior ministry in Rome.

The charitable Sant'Egidio religious community in Rome has said more than 2,000 migrants have drowned while trying to reach the Italian coast aboard unseaworthy craft since 1990.

Three African migrants found dead in sea off Cape Verde: report

LISBON, Jan 4 (AFP) - Maritime police in Cape Verde found the bodies of three African would-be immigrants floating off the coast of the Atlantic archipelago on Wednesday, Portuguese state television's African service reported.

The three are believed to have drowned after the capsize of the boat they were using to reach a larger vessel, heading to Europe with 237 illegal migrants aboard, RTP Africa reported citing local police.

That vessel set off from Cape Verde on December 27 towards Spain's Canary Islands further north but returned to the former Portuguese colony on Tuesday after the passengers convinced the crew that there was not enough food and water for the journey.

Cape Verde police detained all 237 passengers when the ship arrived at Palmeira on the island of Sal and they are expected to be returned to their countries of origin.

The illegal migrants, who came mostly from West African nations including Gambia, Senegal, and Sierra Leone had paid 1,000 euros (1,185 dollars) each to travel on the unnamed boat.

Police said they expected to find more bodies in the waters off the island of Sal, one of the 10 islands which make up Cape Verde.

Cape Verde lies near major north-south sea routes and is an important sea and air refuelling site.

The archipelago, located some 600 kilometres (370 miles) off the coast of West Africa, has become a key trans-shipment point between Europe and Africa and Southern America for drugs and increasingly migrants.

African immigrants looking to enter Europe without proper documentation often seek to sneak into the Canary Islands or a Spanish enclave in Morocco. Many die each year trying.

162 immigrants rescued off Sicily

ROME, Jan 7 (AFP) - A total of 162 illegal immigrants were taken off their boat after it broke down off Sicily on Saturday, local authorities said.

The passengers, including seven women and two children, were taken by coastguard and customs vessels to the island of Lampedusa, pending transfer to Sicily.

Italy is a magnet for migrants trying to gain access to the European Union.

Last year more than 15,000 people coming from the Middle East, Asia and North Africa, were detained after trying to illegally land on its peninsula and islands, according to the interior ministry in Rome.

The charitable Sant'Egidio religious community in Rome has said more than 2,000 migrants have drowned while trying to reach the Italian coast aboard unseaworthy craft since 1990.

Spanish jail term confirmed for Moroccan people trafficker

MADRID, Jan 16, 2006 (AFP) - Spain's supreme court has confirmed a 40-year jail term for a Moroccan people trafficker convicted in November 2004 after 37 illegal immigrants drowned off the southern port of Cadiz, judicial sources said Monday.

The man, Hamid E., had appealed his conviction for the October 25, 2003, drownings, which the court found to be a "crime against the rights of foreign workers."

The original court ruling found he had deliberately refused the help of a nearby vessel which could have rescued the victims on a boat crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, a route used by thousands of African migrants headed for Europe.

Each of the victims had paid 2,000 euros (2,400 dollars) for the fatal voyage on a vessel which had no life jackets or life rafts.

Hamid E., one of two men piloting the craft, saw the court throw out the appeal after it ruled Saturday that the passengers were being carried in "conditions of enormous risk" and were too numerous for their vessel.

As weather conditions deteriorated on the afternoon of the tragedy, a boat tried to come to the passengers' assistance but was waved away "with no consideration for the risk posed to the life of those on board," the court found.

Twenty minutes later a huge wave overturned the boat, causing the largest number of drownings in such an incident off the Spanish coast.

Twenty dead in refugee boat that landed in Yemen: UNHCR

GENEVA, Jan 20, 2006 (AFP) - Twenty people have died trying to cross by boat from Somalia to Yemen, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday.

William Splinder, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugess (UNHCR), said that the deaths occured on a craft which reached shore in Yemen on January 16 carrying 65 people and six bodies.

Another 14 people reportedly died during the voyage -- six who threw themselves into the sea because they could not bear the thirst and a further eight who died on board and who were thrown into the water -- Splinder told journalists.

Some 16 of the victims were Somalis and four Ethiopians, he added.

"The latest tragic deaths underscore the urgency of UNHCR's earlier appeal for action to stem the flow of desperate people who fall prey to smugglers in their flight from Somalia and Ethiopia," said Spindler.

The boat left the Puntland region of Somalia with little food or water, allegedly to increase space for its human cargo, he added.

After its engine failed, the vessel drifted in the Gulf of Aden for six days.

UNHCR staff in Yemen arranged medical assistance for survivors -- some of whom had bite marks from crazed fellow passengers -- and took 25 to a UNHCR transit centre, said Spindler.

"That horrific voyage is not unusual," he added.

Crews of passing ships have in the past saved people found drifting in the gulf's shark-infested waters.

Between 12-17 January, 22 boats carrying an unknown number of Somalis and Ethiopians arrived in Yemen, said Splinder. From these, the UNHCR registered 1,217 Somalis and 39 Ethiopians.

"The true numbers can only be guessed at," he added.

Thousands of Somalis arrive in Yemen every year, including an estimated 100 per day during the September to March period of good sailing weather.

Yemen is one of the few countries in the region to have signed the 1951 international refugee convention, and has been generous in its treatment of migrants or refugees -- automatically granting refugee status to Somalis -- noted Spindler.

There are currently more than 80,000 registered refugees in Yemen, some 75,000 of whom are Somalis. But hundreds of thousands of unregistered refugees are believed to be there.

"Many who arrive by sea continue north from Yemen in search of a better life," said Spindler.

UNHCR increases death toll to 53 in migrant boat incidents off Yemen
By BRADLEY S. KLAPPER
24 January 2006

GENEVA (AP) - The U.N. refugee agency on Tuesday increased the number of dead to at least 53 in a series of incidents over the last four days involving migrant boats off Yemen's coast. Dozens more were missing.

Two boats capsized, killing at least 42 people, said Ron Redmond, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Poor conditions on a third ship killed 11, four of whom were reportedly thrown overboard while still alive, he said.

The three vessels, each of which departed from near the northeastern Somalia port of Boassaso carrying about 120 Ethiopians and Somalis, were all headed to Yemen, a regular route for boats smuggling people across the Gulf of Aden.

Thousands of Somalis and Ethiopians attempt to escape poverty in their countries by crossing the Gulf of Aden each year, many hoping to reach Europe.

UNHCR has called "for international action to stem the flow of people falling prey to smugglers," Redmond said. "But the traffic continues."

While some survivors have trickled into UNHCR's office in Yemen, he said the death toll could still rise as authorities recovered more bodies.

Yemen has signed the 1951 Refugee Convention and automatically grants refugee status to those citizens of war-torn Somalia who arrive on its territory.

But Ethiopians seeking the same to status have to apply on an individual case basis and are therefore more likely to avoid UNHCR reception centers, Redmond explained.

The latest incident occurred Sunday, when a boat reportedly capsized off of south Yemen's rocky shoreline. Authorities have recovered 20 bodies from the incident, but only five survivors have been accounted for, Redmond said.

The accident followed reports of deaths from two separate incidents on Saturday.

Authorities recovered 22 bodies and survivors reported 28 people missing after a boat capsized near Bir Ali, on Sudan's southern coast.

Another 11 people died as a result of poor conditions on a smugglers' vessel that managed to land at Bir Ali, dropping some 120 people ashore. Four people were thrown overboard during the voyage, according to reports received by UNHCR.

The agency says it is working to try and reduce the flow of refugees across the Gulf of Aden, but even so, at least 27 boats have landed on the Yemen coast since Jan. 12. During that week, UNHCR registered more than 1,300 refugees at its Mayfa'a center.

UNHCR estimates there are hundreds of thousands of refugees in Yemen, mainly from Somalia, most of whom arrive by sea and later continue north in search of a better life elsewhere.

Somalia has been without an effective central government since clan-based warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Warlords then turned on each other, plunging the country of 7 million into chaos.

Morocco arrests Algerian immigrants after boat capsizes

RABAT, Jan 24, 2006 (AFP) - Seven Algerian would-be immigrants were arrested on the northern Morocco coast after their boat sank in stormy seas in an attempt to reach the Spanish coast, a local official quoted by MAP news agency said Tuesday.

Moroccan security forces overnight Monday picked up the group that had set off from Ben Saf in northern Algeria in an inflatable boat.

In a similar incident along the same coast the previous day, three people died and five others were reported missing when their inflatable craft carrying 57 Moroccans capsized.

Nearly 370 would-be immigrants drowned last year trying to reach Spain's southern coast or the Canary Islands and a better life in Europe, according to a Spanish report cited by Moroccan newspaper Liberation on Monday.

No sign of missing migrant vessel off coast off Florida Keys
By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ
27 January 2006

MIAMI (AP) - Authorities returned to the sea Friday to search for a homemade boat carrying 15 migrants that disappeared Wednesday night amid fog and ocean swells off the Florida Keys.

Authorities said they have found no evidence that the fragile craft sank or that its passengers had been picked up by any other vessel.

"We've found no debris, nothing that has shown one way or another," said U.S. Coast Guard Spokesman Dana Warr.

Warr said two C130 propeller planes, used for long-range surveillance, were searching the area where the boat was first spotted by a Customs and Border Patrol helicopter. A Coast Guard cutter was also in the area.

Warr said he did not know how much longer the search would continue.

Coast Guard Spokesman Ryan Doss said that good Samaritans usually report citing such crafts and that those who pick up migrants trying to enter the country illegally and don't contact authorities are often involved in organized smuggling.

"We can't rule out anything at this point," he said.

The Customs Black Hawk helicopter first spotted the wooden craft on a routine flyover shortly before dusk Wednesday about 46 miles off the coast. The small vessel had no engine and appeared to be taking on water, said Customs Spokesman Zachary Mann.

Mann said the helicopter was forced to return to its base in Homestead around 7 p.m. due to poor weather. When another aircraft from Jacksonville arrived shortly afterward, it could no longer find the roughly 15-foot boat.

Both Customs and Coast Guard officials said they believed the migrants were Cuban.

Officials have been searching around the clock since Wednesday night and have covered more than 1,400 square miles, Mann said.

Ramon Sanchez, head of the Cuban activist group, Democracy Movement, said he was disturbed by the disappearance but added that he was not surprised.

"Many lives have been lost in the straights because people are desperately looking for freedom and are desperate to leave Cuba. In reality we will never know how many. We know only of those who arrive here or are repatriated," he said.

Sanchez recently waged an 11-day hunger strike after another group of Cuban immigrants who landed at an abandoned bridge in the Florida Keys was repatriated.

The federal government has since agreed to hear concerns about its so-called wet-foot, dry-foot policy, in which Cubans who reach U.S. soil are allowed to stay and those stopped at sea are turned back.

Greek truck driver arrested with 34 illegal migrants in tow

ATHENS, Jan 30, 2006 (AFP) - Authorities in the northwestern Greek port of Igoumenitsa arrested two Greeks on Monday for allegedly attempting to smuggle 34 foreign nationals out of the country, the merchant marine ministry said.

The 34 men, who lacked travel documents and whose nationalities were not disclosed, were hidden among cotton bales on board a truck awaiting transport by ferry.

The Igoumenitsa port authorities arrested the truck's 33-year-old driver and a 25-year-old female passenger, the ministry said.

Situated on the European Union's southeastern gateway, and with a long coastline, Greece is a popular entry point for would-be migrants seeking passage to western Europe.

U.S. rescues stranded Cuban migrants in Bahamas; one hospitalized
3 February 2006

NASSAU, Bahamas (AP) - A U.S. Coast Guard cutter rescued eight Cubans from a remote island in the Bahamas after they were stranded while trying to reach the United States, authorities said Friday.

The migrants were taken aboard a Coast Guard ship while authorities in the United States and the Bahamas decided where to take them. An eighth migrant was flown to Florida for medical treatment, said Ryan Doss, Coast Guard Petty Officer.

The migrants told the U.S. Coast Guard they were part of a group of 14 who left Cuba on Jan. 13 in an attempt to reach Florida and that six people died before they landed on Elbow Cay a week later.

Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Terry Johns, who is based at the U.S. Embassy in Nassau, said the rescued Cubans would be turned over to Bahamian authorities, who typically deport illegal immigrants to their native countries.

Later, however, Immigration Minister Vincent Peet said that they could be transferred to the custody of authorities in the United States, which generally allows Cuban migrants to remain in the country if they reach U.S. territory but deports those captured at sea.

Greece: Immigrants rescued from boat fire
16 February 2006

ATHENS, Greece (AP) - Coast guards rescued 18 illegal immigrants Thursday from a fishing boat that caught fire off the Aegean island of Samos, authorities said.

The immigrants -- 17 men and one woman -- had sailed from the nearby Turkish coast without travel documents.

None of them were hurt in the fire, though all were hospitalized on Samos with symptoms of hypothermia, the Merchant Marine Ministry said. It did not immediately know the immigrants' nationalities.

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Aid group says more than 1,000 died in four months trying to reach Spain's Canary Islands
7 March 2006

MADRID, Spain (AP) - More than 1,000 Africans have died over the past four months while trying to sail in small boats from Mauritania to Spain's Canary Islands, a Mauritanian aid official said Tuesday.

Ahmed Ould Haya, head of Mauritania's branch of the International Committee of the Red Crescent, spoke a day after reporting the death of at least 45 would-be immigrants in two accidents Saturday and early Monday.

He told the Spanish radio station Cadena Ser that 40 percent of the boats that leave Mauritania for the Canary Islands -- a trip of at least 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) over the Atlantic -- sink or capsize along the way.

Since Nov. 10, between 1,200 and 1,300 people have died trying to reach the Spanish islands from Mauritania, Ould Haya said.

He said the Africans who attempt the journey are desperate to reach Europe in search of a better life. "For them is it like a game of Russian roulette: either I make it or I die."

The Spanish Interior Ministry's top official in the Canary Islands, Jose Segura, said that while hundreds of Africans have died in the past few months trying to make the trip, three or four boats reach the islands each day.

So far this year, more than 2,000 immigrants have made it to the islands, he told Cadena Ser.

Every year thousands of Africans try to reach Spain by one of two traditional routes -- across the Strait of Gibraltar to the Spanish mainland, or leaving from the Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara across Atlantic waters to the Canary Islands.

Moroccan police have cracked down on the dangerous departures, though, causing many to head further south and leave from Mauritania, the newspaper El Pais reported Tuesday.

Three migrants found dead at Italian port

ROME, March 7, 2006 (AFP) - Police in the southern Italian port of Bari were Tuesday investigating the deaths of three illegal immigrants found dead in a cargo container from Albania, the ANSA news agency reported.

The driver of the truck fled as police checked the vehicle, acting on a tip-off, according to the agency.

Police said the dead men, aged between 20 and 25, were from Macedonia.

They said the cause of death was probably suffocation due to exposure to raw silicone transported in the container, which landed from the Albanian port of Durres on Monday night.

A post mortem was being held Tuesday.

Spanish boat finds 24 bodies after record immigration rush by Africans
By CIARAN GILES
15 March 2006

MADRID, Spain (AP) - A Spanish boat recovered the bodies of 24 people believed to be African migrants floating in waters off the coast of Mauritania, hundreds of miles south of the Canary Islands, authorities said Wednesday.

The news came only hours after police intercepted some 400 Africans trying to reach the Canary Islands -- a single-day record -- after a dangerous 400-mile voyage in nine overcrowded boats from Mauritania, officials said.

Many of the 24 victims had life jackets on them, according to a Labor Ministry official who requested anonymity because she's forbidden to be identified publicly.

The hospital ship found the first five bodies late Tuesday after being alerted by fishing boats in an area 70 miles off the coast of Mauritania, the official said. Nineteen more bodies were found a short while later. All the drowned were thought to be from African countries.

Thousands of Africans seeking a better life try to reach Europe in boats to Spain each year. Hundreds are believed to drown in the attempt.

The immigrant boats traditionally set out from Morocco or the Western Sahara, sailing across the Strait of Gibraltar to the Spanish mainland or to the Canary Islands, off the coast of northwest Africa.

After the massive interception Tuesday, four government ministers held an emergency meeting Wednesday to decide on measures. A Foreign Ministry delegation is scheduled to fly to Mauritania on Thursday for talks with authorities there.

Spain also offered to supply Mauritania with boats to help it patrol its coasts and aid to set up immigrant shelters.

A report from the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, by the leading Spanish daily El Pais this week estimated there were nearly half a million would-be immigrants gathered there awaiting a chance to travel to Spain.

More than 3,000 migrants have reached the Canary Islands from north Africa so far this year, compared to 4,751 in all of 2005 and 8,519 in 2004.

NYC Woman Gets 35 Years for Human Smuggling
By DAVID B. CARUSO
16 March 2006

NEW YORK (AP) - A Chinatown businesswoman was sentenced to 35 years in prison Thursday for immigrant smuggling, including a 1993 voyage that ended in the deaths of 10 Chinese in the waters off New York City.

Cheng Chui Ping, 57, pleaded for more than an hour for leniency, saying she was a hardworking immigrant who loved America and had been terrorized by Chinatown gangs.

U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey listened patiently, then dismissed the speech as "simply incredible" and gave Cheng the maximum.

He said evidence at the trial had shown conclusively that she was a leader in a ring that took millions of dollars from illegal immigrants, transported them in inhumane and dangerous conditions, and used violent gangsters to collect debts.

Among the decrepit cargo ships that carried Cheng's human cargo was the Golden Venture, a hulk that ran aground near Queens. Ten immigrants died trying to swim to shore.

Prosecutors said Cheng financed that voyage, as well as a deadly 1998 trip in which a ship capsized off Guatemala, killing 14 people.

Cheng was arrested in Hong Kong in 2000 after six years as a fugitive.

Survivors' tales: saved from a sinking boat off Cameroon

YAOUNDE, March 25, 2006 (AFP) - The wooden boat packed with west Africans capsized in rough seas off Cameroon before dawn, sending most of the passengers to a watery grave wellshort of Gabon, their unlikely Eldorado, survivors and witnesses recalled in some of the first accounts of the disaster.

Olivier from Benin was one of the 26 people saved from the sinking pirogue, a simple open boat with plank seating of a kind used throughout Africa. There were more than 150 people on board when it sank Wednesday.

It was still dark out on the Gulf of Guinea, Olivier recalled Friday, when he realized that the boat he had been traveling on from Nigeria was never going to make it to the offshore oil-rich nation of Gabon.

"A strong wind battered our pirogue... And then it overturned and it was each man for himself to try to save his life. That was Wednesday, in the wee hours of the morning," he said.

The boat sank very quickly, throwing the passengers into the dark, wind-whipped seas.

"I was lucky and was able to hold onto a floating bundle," said Noelle Fowe, a 31-year-old woman from Benin.

Others had no luck. "I saw a man near me die, exhausted with holding onto a plank, " said Fowe. "Me, I suffered a few injuries. God be praised. I survived."

Olivier's life too was saved by good fortune. He and a friend held onto some rope together.

"I thought for sure I was going to die. Then about four in the morning, we saw the Cameroonian fishermen who saved us. It was a very close call."

It took the fishermen from the coastal town of Kribi several hours to reach the sinking boat.

"We were alerted by boatmen who found the passengers and some bodies floating in the middle of the sea," said Alex Bayek, a Kribi resident.

Help was organized quickly, officials recalled.

"We received help from the national navy, the Red Cross and other volunteers," said regional administrator Gregoire Mvondo.

Twenty-three people were initially rescued, and then three more, officials said Friday. The latest known survivor was found some 100 kilometers north of the capsized boat, leaving officials hoping that others were also saved further along the coast.

The wooden boat had been overloaded, Olivier said, adding that "the owners, when we left Orong, told us that we would go to sea in a very big boat. But it was really overloaded. We did not know that we were going to face death."

Francois Mahouve of the Red Cross also said the initial inquiry indicated that there were too many people on board.

It was not an uncommon scene. Makeshift boats packed with people from Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Mali, sail past Cameroon "looking for work and a good life" in what they think is the oil "Eldorado" of Gabon, Mvondo said.

"My nephew promised to find me work in Gabon," said Joachim Ba Mekoutche, 35, who was pulled out of the sea by fishermen on Wednesday.

Fellow survivor Yvonne Amousounga, 17, echoed his story -- a promise of work with her aunt in Gabon.

But she is left with tragedy from the sinking boat.

"I was with my sister. She died."

Dozens of bodies washed ashore from capsized boat off Cameroon

YAOUNDE, March 31, 2006 (AFP) - Dozens of decomposing bodies have been washed ashore in southwest Cameroon after a wooden boat with more than 150 west Africans on board capsized last week, witnesses told AFP Friday.

Until now, 26 people had been saved from the sinking boat and only 17 bodies had been recovered near Kribi, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of the capital Yaounde.

The pirogue -- a simple open boat with plank seating of a kind used throughout Africa --- had left the Nigeria city of Orong bound for Port Gentil, the economic capital of Gabon, when it capsized before dawn on March 22.

The head of Mitimbo, a fishing encampment, told AFP by telephone that over the past few days "almost 40 decomposing bodies were buried in a common grave."

Witnesses at other locations along the Cameroonian coast including Ntongoue, Eboule, Elombe, Sitane and Koutaba, reported similar findings.

"We are afraid that it could cause an epidemic in our camp," said a young man who took part in the burials, adding that local authorities have not provided any material or medical help to the villages.

The capsized boat of migrants was the second such tragedy in less than a year off Cameroon -- 43 people drowned when a boat carrying passengers from Nigeria to Gabon sank off Campo on the country's southern coast last June.

Greek coastguards hold 19 would-be illegal immigrants

ATHENS, April 2, 2006 (AFP) - Coast-guards on the southeastern Aegean island of Kos on Sunday arrested 19 would-be illegal immigrants and the man suspected of smuggling them, the merchant marine ministry said.

The immigrants, eight Algerians, seven Palestinians and four Mauritanians, were intercepted at sea north-east of the island near the Turkish coast.

They were travelling in a speedboat driven by a 21-year-old Turkish man, a ministry spokesperson told AFP.

The Kos harbour master's office has opened an inquiry and the men are due to appear Monday before the island's prosecutor.

Greece's Aegean islands are a popular entry point for thousands of would-be immigrants from Asia and the Middle East seeking passage to western Europe, many of whom travel via Turkey.

Mauritania: 32 Migrants May Have Drowned
By AHMED MOHAMMED
2 April 2006

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania (AP) - A boat packed with West Africans trying to reach Europe collided with a fishing vessel, leaving 32 of the migrants missing and believed drowned, Mauritanian officials said Sunday.

Mauritania, located in the northwest of Africa about 600 miles from Spain's Canary Islands, has increasingly become a jumping-off point for Africans from others countries to sneak into Europe for a better life.

More than 1,000 Africans have died in the past four months trying to sail in small wooden boats to the Canary Islands, Mauritania's Red Crescent branch has said.

In the latest ill-fated voyage, a boat with 57 Africans struck a fishing vessel Saturday as it set out from this desert country, said Commandant Sidi Ould Ahmed of Mauritania's military police. Ahmed said the vessels collided about 20 miles off the coast.

He said 32 people were missing. The others were saved by fishing boats, said Dr. Abdallahi Ould Sidi, who treated the survivors in the capital of Nouakchott.

Spain has been helping Mauritania try to stem the tide of migrant-filled boats leaving its coast, and Spanish authorities said Sunday they were looking for another ship believed to be carrying hundreds of illegal West Africans toward the Canary Islands.

Local newspapers Canarias 7 and El Dia reported on their Web sites that the ship could be carrying more than 500 people.

On Thursday, an Interior Ministry official, Jose Segura, said Spain should brace itself for a "numerous and anarchic" increase in illegal migrations from Africa.

More than 3,000 migrants have reached the Canary Islands so far this year, the vast majority packed into narrow, open wooden boats that sometimes take weeks to make the dangerous voyages.

Mauritania does not offer the easiest route to Europe, but other countries just across the ocean from southern Europe have cracked down on illegal migrants, prompting human traffickers to step up efforts to send would-be immigrants by traditional wooden fishing canoe to the Canary Islands.

21 held in apparent human smuggling attempt in Seattle
By TIM KLASS
5 April 2006

SEATTLE (AP) - Twenty-one people were being held early Wednesday after they apparently arrived in a 40-foot cargo container aboard a ship from China, officials said.

Port of Seattle security guards spotted the 17 men and four women about 1 a.m. at Terminal 18, determined that they were not crew members from the recently arrived cargo ship Rotterdam and summoned federal authorities, said Michael Milne, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

All appeared to be Chinese nationals in their 20s and 30s and in good physical condition after about 15 days in a 40-foot container that was loaded onto the ship in Shanghai, China, Milne said.

None appeared to be in control or directing the others, nor was there evidence of "any real criminal or terrorist activity ... just an alien smuggling operation," Milne said.

They were being interviewed with the aid of a translator pending detention, pending further investigation and likely deportation proceedings, he said.

The container, the second from the ground in a stack of four, had been flagged for a special examination which had not been conducted before the group was caught, Milne said. He would not reveal why it had been flagged but said it was equipped with water bottles, food, blankets and toilet facilities.

It was apparently the first detection of a human smuggling attempt using a cargo container in Seattle since a flurry along the U.S. and Canadian West Coast in 2000 and 2001. Almost all of those caught were deported, but three of 18 in a shipping container aboard the NYK Cape May died before reaching Seattle in January 2000.

The Rotterdam docked about 9 a.m. Tuesday and was carrying general cargo. After Shanghai, the ship made three stops at other Asian ports -- Milne said he did not know which ones -- and then at Pusan, South Korea, before heading for Seattle.

Early Wednesday the group apparently pried open the container, lowered themselves about seven feet to the ground and tried to slip out of the secured terminal area, he said.

About half were discovered by a guard "on a routine security patrol" within the terminal and the other half were spotted trying to get out through Gate 4, Milne said.

Once they were intercepted, "there was no attempt to flee or hide," he said. "They were cooperative."

Port and city police as well as federal authorities established a cordon, checked cars leaving Harbor Island and are confident no one who might have been in the container escaped detection, Milne said.

Cuban Authorities Kill 1 Man In Migrant Smuggling Attempt
6 April 2006

HAVANA (AP)--The Cuban Coast Guard shot two suspected migrant smugglers from the United States, killing one, when they and a third man refused orders to halt their speed boat as it neared the island, official media said Thursday.

The Communist Party daily Granma said the confrontation occurred early Wednesday morning near Cuba's northern coast in the western province of Pinar del Rio.

The ranking Coast Guard officer ordered officers to open fire after the three-man crew aboard the 40-foot boat failed to stop as ordered and launched "violent sudden attacks" on a Coast Guard vessel, damaging the craft and almost causing it to overturn, the newspaper said.

Chinese nationals held in apparent human smuggling attempt
By ELIZABETH M. GILLESPIE
6 April 2006

SEATTLE (AP) - After catching 22 Chinese nationals in an apparent human smuggling operation, federal investigators are trying to determine who was responsible.

Port of Seattle security guards spotted the 18 men and four women early Wednesday soon after they emerged from a shipping container that arrived the previous day on the China Shipping Line's MV Rotterdam at Terminal 18.

They were quickly rounded up, interviewed with the aid of a translator and held for further investigation and likely deportation as officials sought higher-ups in the investigation, said Michael Milne, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

All appeared in their 20s and 30s and in good physical condition after about two weeks in a container that was loaded onto the ship in Shanghai, Milne said.

The container had been flagged for a special examination because it was lighter than if it had been full of cargo, but the inspection had not been made before the group was caught.

"We realized it was light when we picked up the container," Bob Watters, a spokesman for SSA Marine, which operates the terminal, told The Seattle Times. "Customs checked the manifest (a cargo list) and found no detailed information in it."

The container was equipped for survival with water bottles, food, blankets and toilet facilities but reeked of human waste, workers said.

"The conditions are certainly not deluxe, but everyone came off in apparently good health," Milne said.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., cited the operation in a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday about a maritime cargo security bill she introduced last year.

"That incident is a stark reminder that we are not doing enough to keep our cargo container system secure," Murray said. "This appears to have been a case of human smuggling, but that cargo container could have been filled with anything from a dirty bomb to a cell of terrorists."

Milne said there was no evidence of "any real criminal or terrorist activity ... just an alien smuggling operation."

It was unclear how much the stowaways paid to make the voyage. According to a statement issued by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, smuggling fees for illegal immigrants from China have historically ranged from $30,000 to $60,000 per person.

"What happened in Seattle was that something went wrong," Ko-Lin Chin, a Rutgers University professor and expert on human smuggling, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "There should be someone there to help them. Someone has to pick them up."

Leigh Winchell, special agent in charge of the immigration and customs agency's Seattle office, said investigators are committed to working with the Department of Homeland Security "not only to disrupt this kind of activity, but to identify and dismantle the criminal organizations behind it."

Authorities said it was the first human smuggling attempt involving cargo containers in six years. In January 2000, immigration officers intercepted two cargo containers on two different vessels carrying 37 smuggled Chinese aliens, three of whom died along the way.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said better screening of cargo arriving at U.S. ports would require better cooperation with trading partners and quicker deployment of scanning technology in foreign ports.

"It's high time Congress passed the Commerce Committee bill I've worked on to require cargo to be screened at the port of origin," Cantwell wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

Republican Mike McGavick, a former Safeco Corp. chief executive who's running against Cantwell, said: "We're not making enough progress and we need a change -- a change in who represents our state's interests in Washington, D.C."

The Rotterdam docked about 9 a.m. Tuesday and was carrying general cargo. Based on the ship's manifest, investigators believe it left Shanghai on March 23, Milne said.

Four days earlier, it was in Hong Kong, and the following day, it was in Yantian, China. After Shanghai, the ship made a stop at Nangbo, China, then Pusan, South Korea, before heading for Seattle, Milne said.

The Malta-flagged Rotterdam, which U.S. authorities said is registered in Liberia, left the port Wednesday afternoon after authorities determined there was no reason to hold it in Seattle.

Norton Lilly, a Mobile, Ala., company listed as China Shipping Line's agent, did not return a message seeking comment.

Canary Islands, from European tourist mecca to immigrants' dream of new beginning
By MAR ROMAN
8 April 2006

LOS CRISTIANOS, Canary Islands (AP) - British and German sun-lovers flock here by the millions to loll on the white-sand beaches, eat fresh seafood in breezy outdoor restaurants and down one too many glasses of sangria at night.

But another type of newcomer has inundated the Canary Islands in recent months -- desperate and hungry African migrants arriving on the spectacular coastline in packed fishing boats.

These Spanish islands have always been a gateway to Europe but more so this year than ever as access through other routes become tougher.

The influx worries locals who depend on the islands' reputation as a tourist paradise for their livelihoods. Officials fear many more migrants will attempt the dangerous 600-mile journey as the weather improves.

If they do, officials say they will be dealing with an economic crisis, as well as a humanitarian one. The islands' economy is based almost entirely on tourism, and even a small drop-off in paying visitors would be devastating.

"If this phenomenon increases, it could provoke a feeling of alarm and rejection among tourists," said Ricardo Fernandez de la Puente, manager of Asotel, an association representing 290 hotels and apartments in four of the seven Canary Islands. "Tourists seek tranquility. They don't want problems, and as soon as they see one, they change their minds and go somewhere else."

Some 4,000 Africans have been caught trying to reach the archipelago so far this year -- compared to 4,751 for all of 2005. More than 125 people -- most from Mali and Senegal -- have been detained since Monday.

Worried tourism officials have met with local and regional authorities to address the issue, Fernandez de la Puente said. The islands' justice minister has urged Spain to reinforce its border police, install more radar and have more patrol boats with Mauritania, a popular departure point.

Some 10 million tourists come to the Canary Islands every year -- including 3.6 million from Britain and 2.5 million Germans. Nearly 80 percent of the islands' 1.9 million people lives directly or indirectly off tourism.

For the moment, the crisis has not seriously affected the tourist trade, which peaks in May before dropping off in the hot summer months.

Already, however, the tide of humanity has made for some extraordinary scenes.

On Wednesday, bemused tourists on Tenerife island watched from a ferry terminal as coastguards brought into port a group of 32 immigrants. Some snapped pictures of the migrants -- who had spent days at sea drifting with the wind. Another group of tourists waved excitedly at the newcomers from a catamaran where they were holding a party.

"I didn't know that immigrants were coming here by boat," said Simon Jones, 44, a Londoner on vacation. "I'm not worried, although if they start coming here, places like Tenerife will be less safe."

"These things happen. You cannot do anything about it," said Piet Visser, a Dutch mechanic in his late 50s who was on vacation along with his wife. "It's very dramatic."

Others said the arrivals had a sobering effect, making them realize how fortunate they are.

"It is a strange and depressing feeling as a tourist to see these people arrive here with hopes and fears," said 37-year-old Daphne Katsouros, of Bonn, Germany. "It makes me feel bad and makes me think how lucky I am and how desperate they are."

For decades, Africans migrants have set out from Morocco, sailing north across the Strait of Gibraltar to the Spanish mainland or westward to the Canary Islands. But a crackdown by Moroccan authorities has increasingly steered migrants to the islands, with Mauritania as the new departure point.

Since December, about 1,000 migrants have died attempting the four- to five-day journey, according to the Red Cross in Mauritania.

Those who make it to the Canary Islands are taken to detention facilities -- well away from the glamorous beach hotels -- where they are held until authorities can arrange for them to be repatriated, almost always within 40 days.

"Who pays for the care of the immigrants, for their medicines, for the patrol boats? I'm sure all this means that our taxes will go up," said Dutchman Frank Jansen, who has been running a restaurant along the oceanside for the last three years. "Maybe it's not going to be a problem in the first year, but it could be in the long run and then nobody would want to come to Tenerife."

Others said they are confident nothing will keep vacation-crazy Europeans away from the great weather and beautiful beaches.

"There's nothing to worry about. This is a great place to be. There are no crocodiles. There is no danger," said restaurant owner Javier de La Rosa. "It's unfortunate that things are so bad in Africa, but this is not a problem that is exclusive to the Canary Islands. It affects the whole world."

Cuban TV says man shot in apparent smuggling clash had left Cuba just 3 weeks ago
By ANITA SNOW
7 April 2006

HAVANA (AP) - The suspected migrant smuggler Cuban authorities fatally shot this week left the island as a migrant himself three weeks ago but returned as a crew member on the same boat to repay a debt, state television said Friday.

Although the two surviving suspected smugglers had not been cooperative since their arrest Wednesday morning, authorities confirmed the dead man was named Jeovel Gonzalez Morera, who left the island on March 14 with his girlfriend, Cuban television reported.

According to state media, the confrontation occurred before dawn Wednesday near Cuba's southern coast in the western province of Pinar del Rio after coast guard officers ordered the three-men crew on a 40-foot(12-meter) speed boat to halt.

The official in charge ordered troops to shoot after the boat ignored the order and instead launched "violent sudden attacks" on a coast guard vessel, damaging the craft and almost causing it to overturn, the Communist Party daily Granma said Thursday.

The other two men, both of them U.S. citizens, were wounded in the confrontation, participants in the government's "Mesa Redonda" television program said Friday. Earlier, Granma had said only one of the two surviving men had been hurt.

Those two were earlier identified by the Cuban government as Rafael Mesa Farinas and Rosendo Salgado Castro, and their identities were later confirmed by American officials.

"Mesa Redonda" participants said Mesa Farinas had told Cuban officials that he could not cooperate with them because he feared for his wife and child who he helped get out of Cuba in late 2005 and are currently being held by smugglers in Mexico.

Like Gonzalez, Mesa Farinas had traveled to Cuba on the smuggling trip this week to pay a debt, and had hoped to get his wife and child released, Taladrid said.

U.S. officials have requested consular access to the two surviving men, but by midday Friday access had still not been granted, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington.

The shooting death of a suspected migrant smuggler by Cuban authorities was unusual. Most violence during migration attempts has occurred in confrontations between Cuban authorities and would-be migrants who hijacked boats or planes.

Cuban authorities blamed Wednesday's confrontation on U.S. migration policies they say encourage its citizens to undertake risky journeys to get to the United States.

Cuban authorities later temporarily took into custody 39 people they believe had been scheduled to leave the island on the speedboat: 20 men, 12 women and seven children.

Most of the women and children were later released, but some men remained in custody pending further questioning.

Cuban authorities believe that the speed boat was going to be used to take the would be Cuban migrants to the southeastern Mexican state of Quintana Roo, home to the Mayan Riviera resorts of Cancun and Cozumel.

While most Cuban migrants try to reach U.S. territory by directly crossing the Florida Straits by sea, Mexico is among several other routes smugglers use to get Cuban migrants into the United States.

The migrants then travel north to Mexico's border with the United States, where they inform American officials they are Cubans and are generally allowed to stay.

Under current American policy, most would-be Cuban migrants the U.S. Coast Guard picks up at sea are returned to the island, but most who reach American soil -- either by sea or land -- can stay.

Boat carrying Dominican migrants capsizes off Puerto Rico, leaving at least 5 dead
24 April 2006

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - Powerful waves capsized a boat carrying about 20 illegal migrants near a popular surfing beach, killing at least five of them as surfers desperately tried to help, witnesses and officials said Monday.

At least 13 people aboard the makeshift 14-foot (3.5-meter) wooden boat survived the capsizing Sunday afternoon off the shores of Rincon, near the western tip of Puerto Rico. The migrants apparently were all Dominicans.

"My friend paddled out to where these people were drowning and pulled a woman up on his board," said Alex Irons, a 27-year-old American who lives in Rincon. "There were a lot of people just standing around on the beach wondering what to do about these people drowning out there."

The seas where the boat capsized, near the Rincon lighthouse that sits atop a rocky promontory with waves crashing below, are particularly rough -- attracting experienced surfers from the U.S. mainland.

Irons, in a telephone interview with The Associated Press, said he was driving with his wife to the lighthouse to go surfing when they saw several helicopters flying close to shore, apparently trying to help with the rescue.

"It was total chaos," he said. "There were bodies washing up on the beach."

An unknown number of migrants were traveling aboard the makeshift boat, said Lt. Cmdr. Dave Burns of the U.S. Coast Guard. At least four helicopters, a dive team and a Coast Guard cutter continued searching the area on Monday.

The survivors -- four of whom were treated for dehydration -- will likely be repatriated to the Dominican Republic, authorities said.

Small boats frequently attempt to smuggle migrants from the Dominican Republic to this U.S. Caribbean territory, a roughly 70-mile (112-kilometer) journey across the often-perilous Mona Passage.

Police find 111 would-be immigrants in 2 boats off Spain's Canary Islands
23 April 2006

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Police on Sunday found 111 would-be immigrants packed aboard two fishing boats just off the coast of two of Spain's Canary Islands, authorities said.

A police spokesman said 80 immigrants arrived on Spain's Canary Island of Gomera, and another 31 were detained earlier Sunday after they arrived by boat on nearby Tenerife island, off northwest Africa.

The boats' occupants were believed to be from sub-Saharan countries, including Liberia, Ivory Coast and Senegal, police said. Among the immigrants were one woman and three minors.

Eight of the 80 that arrived in La Gomera had to be treated in hospital on being taken ashore for dehydration while the rest were taken by regular ferry line to Tenerife, where they will be taken to one of the island's holding centers, police said.

Thousands of people try to reach Europe through Spain each year, an increasing number of them coming from Mauritania and Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara. For decades, boats of immigrants have set out from Morocco, sailing north across the Strait of Gibraltar to the Spanish mainland or westwards to the Canary Islands.

In the first three months of this year, about 4,000 African would-be migrants have been caught by Spanish authorities trying to reach the Canary Islands, compared with 4,751 for all of 2005. At least 1,000 more are believed to have died in the choppy seas.

Those who make it are kept in holding centers, and authorities have 40 days to repatriate them before they must release them. The immigrants are either sent back to their country of origin or to the country from which they set sail, but only if Spain has repatriation accords with the countries.

Nation
Wednesday April 26, 2006

Myanmar boat people heading for Malaysia land in Indonesia

JAKARTA (AP) - Indonesia will expel 77 boat people from Myanmar who became stranded on an island in the western province of Aceh while trying to get to Malaysia, an immigration official said Wednesday.

Nazir Ali, a spokesman at the local immigration office in the port town of Sabang on Weh island where the men ran aground Tuesday, said they are still being questioned, but will be returned to international waters when weather conditions improve.

"They are looking for jobs in Malaysia but stranded here. Therefore we will expel them because they have no proper documents,'' Ali said.

"We will coordinate with the navy to escort them to the international border.''

Ali said rough seas and strong winds had prevented their immediate departure and that they will be supplied with fuel, water and food before being towed back out to sea.

The economic migrants, said to be in good health, will be escorted by the Indonesian Navy to the border, said Col. Aswoto Saranang of the Sabang base where they are being sheltered.

Saranang described them as uneducated villagers between 20 and 35 years old who left the military-led Myanmar in search of new livelihoods in northern Malaysia's Penang state.

For Another perspective from the Jakarta Post, a partner of Asia News Network, click here

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Illegal migrant boat capsizes in Aegean Sea
1 drowned, 1 missing
2 May 2006

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - A small boat carrying illegal migrants to Greece capsized off the Turkish coast Tuesday, officials said. The Turkish Coast Guard rescued eight of the migrants, but one person drowned and one other was missing.

The migrants -- from Somalia and Mauritania -- boarded the boat at the Aegean coastal resort of Kusadasi and were bound for the Greek island of Samos.

Each year, thousands of migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa pass through Turkey on their way to Greece and other western European countries.

Hundreds have drowned off the Turkish coast while attempting to reach Greece or Italy or have been killed when they stepped on land mines along the Turkish-Greek border.

Authorities in Senegal intercept 1,500 illegal migrants sailing for Europe
By HEIDI VOGT
23 May 2006

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) - Senegal said Tuesday it has seized more than 1,500 illegal migrants en route to Europe by sea in recent days as part of a push to curtail a surge in departures from its shores.

Col. Jean-Baptiste Faye, the navy officer heading the operation, said the West African country launched a focused crackdown Thursday because the number of boats setting out from its shores has shot up.

"With the closing of (routes through) Mauritania and Morocco, they are starting to leave more and more from Senegal," Faye said. He said Senegal has boosted patrols and increased communication with police and military authorities as part of the operation.

This year has seen a flood of wooden fishing boats leaving from Morocco, and increasingly, Mauritania and Senegal, as poor Africans seek out the easiest way to make the dangerous ocean voyage to Europe. Most of the migrants aim for Spain's Canary Islands, the closest European outpost.

Spanish authorities say they have intercepted more than 6,100 migrants around the Canary Islands since January -- already outpacing the 4,751 caught during all of 2005.

Faye said more than 1,500 people have been detained since Thursday in 21 boats, and two more boats carrying more migrants were seized Monday night -- one off the coast of the capital, Dakar, and another further north toward the city of St. Louis. Faye estimated that Monday's seizures added about 100 more people.

Faye said police have identified 60 of those taken into custody as smugglers who helped organize the departures.

Transit centre swamped as Italy intercepts 820 migrants

ROME, May 22, 2006 (AFP) - Coastguards escorted to land hundreds of migrants floating at sea off the southern Italian island of Lampedusa on Monday, causing an emergency at its overwhelmed transit centre, the ANSA news agency reported.

Coastguards intercepted three vessel, carrying some 400 suspected illegal immigrants, to the Italian island south of Sicily early Monday, following the arrival of hundreds of others on Sunday.

Around 420 migrants were found in boats intercepted off the island over the weekend. The people, whose origin was not known, were taken to the island's secure transit centre, which has a capacity of only 190.

The centre on Lampedusa -- near the coasts of Tunisia and Libya -- is frequently overwhelmed by mass arrivals. People were being transferred Monday to centres in Sicily and elsewhere in Italy by plane and boat.

In 2005, 207 vessels were caught off Italy's coasts carrying a total of around 22,000 migrants. Coastguards and customs officials last year also discovered 70 corpses.

EU will help Spain bar the door against refugees
It offers planes and boats to patrol borders
Renwick McLean
25 May 2006
International Herald Tribune

The Canary Islands are suddenly the outpost of Europe most at risk of experiencing an infusion of refugees from Africa, and the European Union is reacting with alarm.

"Europe has to wake up and stop staring at its belly button," Miguel Becerra, a senior policy adviser for this region of the Spanish government, said in an interview. "If Europe doesn't realize that this is a big problem and that it's going to get worse, we are going to be in real trouble."

The European Union announced late Tuesday that at least eight member states would provide planes, boats and other resources to help Spain patrol its borders.

If a day goes by without a boat full of sub-Saharan migrants landing on the shores of this island, Red Cross officials here begin to worry. "We know they are out there," said Ruben Fernandez, a Red Cross director in Tenerife. "We get reports that boats have left the African coasts. If they haven't arrived, it's because they have been held up by rough seas or have gone off course." Tenerife, the largest of Spain's Canary Islands, which lie about 110 kilometers, or 70 miles, off Morocco's southwestern coast, has become the focal point of a growing wave of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa who appear more and more willing to take enormous risks to reach Europe.

Over the past month, thousands of migrants have been coming ashore here on wooden boats after journeys of 8 to 10 days from the northern coast of Senegal, about 1,400 kilometers away. They come to start a new life, to earn money to send back home, or to flee wars, economic distress and political persecution, according to government and humanitarian officials who have spoken with them. More than 7,000 have arrived in the Canary Islands so far this year, compared with only 4,700 migrants during all of 2005. Officials for the regional government here say they are overwhelmed by the onslaught.

"It is time to realize that what happens in Africa affects Europe directly," Bacerra said. "As people realize that you can get to the heart of Europe by taking a boat to the Canary Islands, the situation is only going to get worse unless Spain, Europe and the international community come up with policies for addressing this."

Becerra said he hoped the announcement was a sign that the immigration problem facing the Canary Islands would finally persuade Europe that it needed to commit to helping Africa.

Boatloads of migrants have been landing on the Canary Islands regularly since March, but over the last few weeks the numbers have increased dramatically, as have the distances traveled by the migrants at sea. In order to escape police crackdowns in Morocco and Mauritania, the migrants have begun leaving shore from farther and farther south, departing from Senegal on journeys that can last over a week. Many of the boats look barely seaworthy.

"They used to come in fiberglass boats; now they are made of wood," said Austin Wainright, the chief of an emergency response team for the Red Cross in Tenerife, after treating a group of 78 immigrants who had arrived, apparently from Senegal.

The boat was about 20 meters long and looked like an enormous canoe, propelled by a small outboard motor. A rusty piece of iron had been made into a rudder. There was a small charcoal-burning stove, a lantern and metal barrels of fuel, but little else.

"They have no radio or satellite phones," Wainright said. "They usually have a small compass or a GPS device. "They have lots of life vests," he added, but if the boat overturns, this would be a slow, miserable death."

Only two deaths have been reported among the immigrants arriving at the Canary Islands this year. But Red Cross officials say that the figure does not tell the full story of the perils faced by the immigrants during their journeys. "The motors are in terrible condition, and if they break, they are at the mercy of the currents and can end up anywhere," Fernandez said.

UN agency warns Sri Lankan refugees against fleeing to India

COLOMBO, May 29, 2006 (AFP) - The United Nations agency for refugees warned Sri Lankans on Monday against fleeing troubled areas and making a "perilous journey" to neighbouring India.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said at least 10 people drowned while making a dangerous crossing in May of the Palk Straits, the narrow strip of sea that divides the two South Asian countries.

"The UNHCR is deeply concerned about the recent drowning of 10 Sri Lankan refugees travelling by boat to India," the agency said in a statement.

It said women and children may also be subject to sexual abuse.

"Many refugees fleeing localized violence are being put at great risk by unscrupulous traffickers who operate unseaworthy and overcrowded vessels," the agency said.

It said the drowning on May 19 was the latest in a series of incidents involving Sri Lankan refugees travelling to the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Some have been abandoned at sea while others have died when their vessels capsized.

"While everyone has an inalienable right to claim asylum, UNHCR urges those planning on making the perilous journey to Tamil Nadu, to carefully consider the serious dangers they may face," said local UNHCR chief Amin Awad.

The movement of Tamil civilians from Sri Lanka's embattled north and east to India is a reverse of a trend that the UNHCR witnessed three years ago when the Sri Lankan government and Tamil Tiger rebels entered into a truce in 2002.

More than 300,000 refugees who were internally displaced had returned to their homes in Sri Lanka's embattled regions following the Norway-arranged truce.

However, violence has escalated since December. And official figures show at least 600 people, more than half of them civilians, have been killed.

Europe Vows to Help Spain With Crisis
By DANIEL WOOLLS
29 May 2006

MADRID, Spain (AP) - European countries far removed from Spain's immigration crisis in the Canary Islands pledged Monday to send planes and patrol boats to help stem the flood of destitute Africans seeking a better life, officials said.

Some 400 more migrants arrived at the islands by boat over the weekend. Authorities have intercepted more than 6,000 migrants since January, compared with 4,751 caught in all of 2005.

The accord is a follow-up to an announcement of aid last week from the European Commission in Brussels, although more meetings are planned to decide which countries will send what and who will pay for it, the Spanish Interior Ministry said.

Spain estimates that in addition to its own planes and vessels monitoring small, crowded boats that bring migrants from west Africa to the Canary Islands, the new plan requires at least five patrol boats, five helicopters and a surveillance aircraft, Deputy Interior Minister Antonio Camacho told a meeting of European Union representatives.

The next meeting to decide the details is scheduled for sometime after June 2, the ministry said.

The countries that have agreed in principle to help Spain are France, Britain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland, officials said.

The problem is European -- not just Spanish -- because the Canary Islands are just like any other part of Spain, and in theory at least, borderless EU travel rules mean someone arriving in the islands can travel to many other parts of Europe without having to show a passport.

The new planes and vessels are scheduled to monitor waters off the key departure points for Africans making the long and dangerous trip to the Canary Islands, such as Mauritania, Senegal and Cape Verde.

The accord was announced as hundreds more migrants were intercepted as they arrived in the Canary Islands and a Foreign Ministry official prepared to begin a tour of African countries for talks aimed at halting the trend.

Authorities counted 186 migrants aboard two vessels escorted into Los Cristianos port on the island of Tenerife. Police said three more boats had been seen close to the islands, likely carrying dozens more would-be immigrants.

Another 129 migrants -- including six small babies -- were intercepted on three boats off the island of Fueteventura, and 112 more were found off the coast of the island of La Gomera, Spain's Civil Guard said.

Meanwhile, Foreign Ministry top aide Bernadino Leon was leaving Monday for a tour of seven west African countries for talks aimed at curbing the boat flood.

"The most urgent thing at this moment is that we should be able to cooperate effectively to stop the immigrants leaving," Leon told Spanish National Radio.

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Associated Press reporter Juan Manuel Pardellas in Tenerife contributed to this report.

Tiny travelers accentuate drama in Canary Islands immigration crisis
By JUAN MANUEL PARDELLAS
30 May 2006

SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Canary Islands (AP) - The tales of desperation that flood the Canary Islands' shores with hundreds of arriving African migrants include those from people too tiny to speak.

Six babies, some younger than 7 months old, were among more than 700 migrants intercepted Monday trying to reach the Spanish islands off northwest Africa, and start a better life in Europe.

Rescue workers receiving three of the boats on the island of Fuerteventura said they were startled to hear an infant crying in the frenzy of the emergency operation.

Amid the crush of migrants on one boat, they found a dark-skinned black woman cuddling an albino boy -- "chubby and well-fed, and not even a year old," Red Cross emergency worker Jorge Roger said.

A gaggle of new crews surrounded the pair, snapping photos before the two were taken to a hospital for checkups.

Minutes later another crowded boat reached the shore, this time with five infants on board, he said.

One woman arrived with birth-related injuries, and said she had miscarried before leaving Africa and buried the child in the Sahara Desert, aid workers said.

"It must have happened very shortly before she left, because she was bleeding very heavily," said Gerardo Mesa Noda, head of the Red Cross in Fuerteventura, one of the islands nearest to the African coast.

Fuerteventura's capital, Puerto del Rosario, has a shelter for parents arriving with babies. But it was built for only 20 people, and is now overflowing as hundreds of thousands of Africans have arrived in the archipelago in recent weeks.

There are currently 28 men, 13 women and 10 babies at the shelter, some of whom will be sent to another island, Gran Canaria.

Though babies have occasionally arrived with the waves of immigrants, receiving six in one day is considered exceptional, aid workers said.

Engine troubles could have led to deadly Atlantic Ocean crossing by African migrants
By MIRANDA LEITSINGER
1 June 2006

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - Engine problems were to blame for leaving adrift a boat packed with Europe-bound African migrants that floated for four months across the Atlantic to the Caribbean Sea off the island of Barbados, investigators said Thursday. Everyone aboard the boat died.

In Spain, police told The Associated Press that authorities have launched two investigations.

The first was begun by Interior Ministry police in Barcelona on a complaint by El-Hadji Sano, a Senegalese man living in the northeastern Spanish city whose brother Malang Sano was believed to have died on the boat. Another investigation is under way in Spain's Canary Islands, located off northwest Africa.

"I want to know what happened," Sano told The Associated Press. "I want justice. Many people have died. They left people in the middle of the sea as if they were animals, and that cannot happen."

The would-be migrants allegedly paid euro1,400 (US$1,800) each to reach Spain, said Barbados police spokesman Barry Hunte. Spanish authorities were seeking a Spanish man they believe organized the trip, the Spanish newspaper El Pais has reported.

Barbadian authorities believe 52 Africans were aboard the rusty 20-foot (6-meter) boat and that it left Senegal on Christmas Eve in a bid to reach Europe. Instead, the boat drifted more than 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) west across the Atlantic. It was found on April 29 by a fisherman off the coast of Barbados.

The boat contained the bodies of 11 young men who were virtually mummified by the sun and salt spray. The other passengers apparently were lost at sea.

The boat's engine was not working -- although there was still diesel in it -- and there was evidence that someone had tried to repair it, said Colvin Bishop, assistant police superintendent in Barbados.

It's unclear where all the passengers were from, though officials presume they were Senegalese, Barbados Attorney General Dale Marshall said.

Clues were found on the boat.

One was a note written by one of the migrants and found tucked between the bodies.

"I would like to send to my family in Bassada (Senegal) a sum of money. Please excuse me and goodbye. This is the end of my life in this big Moroccan sea," he wrote. The note appeared to be written by a Senegalese man named Diao Souncar Dieme, said Marshall. The names Ibrahima Dieme and Omar Badje were mentioned in the note.

The name S.V. Cabafumo also appeared on a jacket, and an Air Senegal plane ticket was issued to a person called Sane Sanah, Hunte said.

An Interpol team has examined the boat and the bodies, which have been moved to a Barbados funeral home. Barbados has asked for fingerprint experts, pathologists and a dentist to investigate further, Marshall said.

For his part, Sano said he will continue to seek justice for his brother.

"I think of my brother all the time ... and every time I think about what happened I get very angry," he said.

With transit routes to Europe through Morocco being gradually sealed, migrants are taking to the seas farther down the coast of northwest Africa, some traveling in overcrowded fishing boats more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) in stages to reach Europe.

The boats often get lost or break down, drifting helplessly in the Atlantic or capsizing in rough seas.

Authorities on the Canary Islands say they have intercepted nearly 7,000 migrants since January, compared to 4,751 in 2005.

More than 1,000 are believed to have perished attempting the journey from Africa to the Canary Islands since December, according to the Red Cross in Mauritania, a favored departure point for the boats.

Ismaila Diallo, of the Casamance region in southern Senegal, said his 19-year-old brother died last year traveling on a boat that sunk as it headed to the Canary Islands. Weeks passed before the family learned he had died.

"It's horrible. When we heard about the death of my brother, it was unbelievable," he said. "I didn't think he was going to die in this way."

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Associated Press writers Mar Roman in Madrid, Spain, and Heide Vogt in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.

Spain intercepts boat with more than 100 migrants off southern coast
6 June 2006

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Spanish police on Tuesday intercepted a fishing boat carrying more than 100 migrants off the southwestern coast.

A police spokesman said the 30-meter boat was spotted around 1:30 p.m. (1130GMT) and was being towed to the southern port of Cadiz.

There were no details on the nationalities of the immigrants or from where they might have set sail.

Thousands of migrants escaping poverty in Africa try to reach Spain by boat each year. Many are believed to die in the attempt.

Traditionally the boats have come from Morocco, but in recent months many have come from Mauritania and Senegal.

Police identify Spaniard suspected in deaths of Africans who drifted across Atlantic
By JUAN MANUEL PARDELLAS
6 June 2006

SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Canary Islands (AP) - Police have identified a Spaniard suspected of organizing an ocean voyage in which dozens of destitute Africans hoping to reach the Canary Islands died after drifting across the Atlantic for four months.

The rusty 20-foot (6-meter) vessel left Cape Verde on the coast of northwest Africa on Christmas Eve and was found near the Caribbean island of Barbados on April 29.

Inside were 11 bodies that were practically mummified by the sun and salt spray. Spanish authorities say they believe another 36 travelers died along the way and were thrown overboard.

Photos of the boat that were published in the media after it was towed into Barbados have led people at marinas in several Spanish cities to come forward and say they recognized the decrepit vessel and to give police a description of the Spaniard who owned it and used to live in it.

The Civil Guard, a paramilitary police unit that answers to the Interior Ministry, has ascertained the fugitive man's name, the number of a cell phone he used and information about companies where he has worked, a Civil Guard official in Barcelona said on condition of anonymity.

The Spanish probe is based in Barcelona because of a complaint filed by El-Hadji Sano, a Senegalese man who lives in that northeastern Spanish city and says his brother Malang is believed to have been on the ill-fated boat.

The Civil Guard has requested information from colleagues in Barcelona, the Spanish Mediterranean island of Ibiza, Las Palmas in the Canary Islands and in Madrid.

Characteristics of the boat that helped people recognize it include its cabin, which does not match the original French design of the boat, and the elevated railing that runs around the sides of the boat for passengers to hold on to, police say.

Authorities in Barbados say engine problems were to blame for the boat ending up adrift. But Spanish authorities say the boat was apparently in terrible condition even before it left Cape Verde, with exposed cables in the engine area and in the cabin.

Barbados authorities say the people on the boat allegedly paid euro1,400 (US$1,800) each to reach Spain. They also placed the number of people originally aboard the boat at 52.

Spanish authorities say the total was 53 and that six people got off at the last minute, wary of the vessel's safety.

Africans trying to reach Spain traditionally have set out from Morocco, but tighter police surveillance has largely closed out these routes, forcing people to set out further south in Africa, from such countries as Mauritania, Cape Verde and Senegal.

Officials in the Canary Islands have intercepted more than 7,000 this year, compared to 4,751 in all of 2005.

Boy drowns, 22 other illegal migrants rescued in Aegean Sea
6 June 2006

ATHENS, Greece (AP) - A 6-year-old boy drowned when a boat carrying illegal immigrants capsized in the eastern Aegean Sea while trying to enter Greece illegally, authorities said Tuesday.

A coast guard vessel recovered the child's body off the island of Samos early Tuesday, while the Netherlands-flagged cruise ship "Noordam" rescued another 22 members of the group, the Merchant Marine Ministry said.

It was unclear whether any other migrants were missing. The circumstances of the capsizing were being investigated, the ministry said.

Greek state NET TV said the child and the survivors were Somali nationals.

The cruise ship took the survivors later Tuesday to its next port of call, the Aegean resort of Kusadasi, in Turkey.

Turkish authorities did not immediately allow the migrants to leave the vessel, as the accident took place in Greek waters. The tourists on the ship -- mostly U.S. nationals -- disembarked.

Also Tuesday, Greek coast guards detained 11 illegal immigrants and arrested two suspected migrant smugglers on a boat off the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos.

Thousands of illegal immigrants enter Greece by sea every year, mostly after paying smuggling gangs to ferry them over from Turkey.

Migrant boat capsizes off Malta; 11 dead
9 June 2006

VALLETTA, Malta (AP) - Italy's coast guard recovered the bodies of three illegal migrants who drowned Friday morning after their boat capsized off Malta's coast, officials said, and the Maltese army called off the search for eight others, who were presumed drowned, raising the death toll to 11.

Sixteen illegal migrants were rescued by an Italian fishing trawler, four of whom were in serious condition, said Sili Pigni, a spokesman for the Italian coast guard in Catania, Sicily.

The Italian coast guard joined Maltese army forces in the search, which was aided by a Maltese army helicopter.

The Maltese armed forces commander, Carmel Vassallo, and Parliamentary Secretary Tony Abela told a news conference in Valletta, the Maltese capital, that the search was called off after rescue teams searching the waters found no trace of other survivors.

Italian fishermen raised the alarm at around 5:15 a.m. (0315GMT) after coming upon the capsized boat and people crying for help in the sea about 40 nautical miles east of Malta.

Authorities determined that 27 people had been on the small boat before it capsized, Italian coast guard Capt. Nazareno Lagana said.

He said it appeared the boat had embarked from Tunisia. Thousands of illegal migrants attempt to reach Italy's coastline every year, mainly from North Africa.

It was not immediately clear how long the migrants had been in the water, but Pigni estimated less than an hour, given the cold water temperature and relatively good condition of those rescued. The waters in the region were calm, and authorities believe the boat capsized because it was overloaded.

Malta, a tiny country which includes three inhabited islands, is 93 kilometers (58 miles) south of Sicily in the Mediterranean.

30 Chinese illegal immigrants intercepted on Canaries

MADRID, June 11, 2006 (AFP) - Thirty Chinese illegal immigrants hidden on a trawler were picked up this week on the Canary islands, the Spanish archipelago's prefect Jose Segura announced Sunday.

Spanish police were questioning the two members of the crew of the Gberedou-1, a 40-metre (120-foot) fishing boat, whose origin was not known but believed likely to be West African.

Segura said the discovery was the result of an enquiry which had involved tracking the boat in several ports which he declined to name.

The Canary Islands, off the coast of Africa, has been in a crisis over illegal immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa since Spain and northern Morocco tightened up their controls at the end of last year.

Unlike the Chinese immigrants intercepted Friday near Tenerife, many Africans make the perilous journey on tiny fishing vessels, many of which sink in the attempt.

More than 9,000 would-be immigrants had been picked up by the end of May this year, breaking the previous record of 9,929 for all of 2002.

In Rome, Italian authorities said they had intercepted a wooden hulk with nearly 400 passengers on board off the island of Lampedusa, off Sicily, where another 100 immigrants had arrived on Saturday.

Three immigration officers boarded the vessel and guided it into port. The passengers were taken to a temporary transit centre on the island, already full to bursting point.

A day earlier authorities had already airlifted 190 illegal immigrants to Crotona, in Calabria, on the Italian mainland, to another shelter.

The tourist destination of Lampedusa is the first Italian territory to be reached by boats from Tunisia or Libya.

The latest arrivals come only two days after 11 would-be immigrants perished when the ship transporting them founded in international waters off Malta. Sixteen survivors were taken to Malta.

Last year Italian coastguards intercepted 207 boats with almost 22,000 illegal immigrants on board, while 70 bodies were fished out of the water by coastguards and immigration officers.

New wave of illegal migrants reaches Malta
20 June 2006

VALLETTA, Malta (AP) - Twenty-five illegal migrants arrived in Malta by boat on Tuesday, police said, raising the total number of clandestines that have landed on the Mediterranean island this year to more than 430.

Maltese authorities met the migrants at sea and escorted them to shore, where they interviewed them and checked their identities, officials said.

Each year thousands of illegal immigrants make the crossing from North Africa, often in fragile vessels that sink before reaching the Italian coasts or islands such as Malta that lie on the way.

More than 1,822 immigrants arrived in Malta last year, according to the National Statistics Office, which released new statistics Tuesday in recognition of World Refugee Day. Most have been identified as coming from Africa, particularly Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan.

Malta has a population of approximately 400,000 and lies about 93 kilometers (58 miles) south of Sicily in the Mediterranean.

Bad governance at home fuels African migration
Thu Jun 22, 2006 08:39 AM ET
By Nick Tattersall

"BEVERLY HILLS," Senegal (Reuters) - Young fishermen playing table football in the sand look up wistfully as another plane bound for Paris roars over their rubbish-strewn beach.

Mothers dressed in bright cloth wraps lounge beside polystyrene cool boxes, brushing away flies in the fetid air as they wait for their sons to return with the day's catch.

Senegal is meant to be an African success story: one of the continent's most stable democracies, religiously tolerant and a major recipient of foreign aid as a result.

But the tree-lined avenues and tower blocks of downtown Dakar belie the discontent of its teeming suburbs, where young men pass languid days contemplating a jobless future.

"Each day we hear about the millions that our country has but nothing of it comes here. Each day we are told lies," said Saliou Seck, 26, one of thousands of young Africans to have risked their lives trying to get to Europe to find work.

"I went to the cybercafe and saw in Spain they need workers. The government knows that but they won't give us visas ... That's why young people are leaving in pirogues," he said, referring to the rickety wooden fishing boats that have carried almost 10,000 Africans to Spain's Canary Islands this year.

Seck, a muscular fisherman in a basketball shirt and baggy shorts, has tried several times to get to the Canaries, risking a voyage that has killed hundreds of his compatriots when they ran out of food or their boats broke up in rough seas.

On his last attempt, he was forced to take control of the boat when the captain lost his nerve and became ill.

"We saw death. There were big waves, like buildings, to the right, left, in the middle, behind us. They were all crying, grown men, they were saying Monsieur, Monsieur we want to go back or we will die," he said.

AGONISING DREAM

The locals call this beach on the outskirts of Dakar "Beverly Hills." Next door lies the "Cote d'Azur," more thick-skinned humor from the Lebou fishermen who work among the rotting bones, goat droppings and horse manure on the sand.

"It's agony, brutal, seeing the plane each day and knowing you will never get a visa," said Cheikh M'Boup, 40, who buys and sells fish but complains of falling prices.

"What hurts the most is that we have endless strength to work. But here you can't find work. It's a disaster."

It wasn't meant to be that way.

President Abdoulaye Wade, an economic liberal, swept to power in 2000 with massive support from unemployed youths hungry for change after four decades of socialist rule, telling his supporters it was "necessary to work: work hard."

Six years on, unemployment is estimated at over 40 percent -- a worrying statistic in a country where half the population is under 18 -- driving some of its most dynamic youths to make increasingly desperate attempts to breach "Fortress Europe."

With no oil reserves or huge deposits of gold or minerals, Senegal has seen strong economic growth, luring foreign investors to its tourism and service sector. But obstacles to investment remain -- including stifling bureaucracy and corruption -- and most people benefit little from foreign funds.

In the fishing communities and working-class neighborhoods of Dakar there are murmurs about the duty Europe's former colonial powers have to help provide work after reaping the benefit of African labor and natural resources.

But most say their own government bears the primary responsibility for creating jobs.

"Look at the ministers' sons, they have new cars, new houses, new clothes. 'The enemies of Africa are Africans'," said one man, quoting the lyrics of Ivorian reggae star Alpha Blondy.

PRESTIGE PROJECTS

From law students at the Cheikh Anta Diop university to hardy men learning the fishing trade from their parents, many young people bemoan the government's lack of priorities.

Government officials do not know or are reluctant to give unemployment figures. The most recent data available from the national statistics office dates from 1988.

With presidential elections next year and an Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) summit to host, Wade's government is focusing on "feel-good" infrastructure projects designed to make Dakar look more glamorous.

The showpiece is a four-lane coastal highway costing upwards of $30 million which will allow politicians and delegates to bypass the open sewers and mountains of rubbish piled up on the streets where much of the city's population lives.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and Wade laid the foundation stone in April of the $250 million "Gaddafi Tower," which will house a five-star hotel, conference center, offices and shops.

"There is money in this country but the government does not know how to manage it," said fish seller Abdourhamane Badiane, 20. "We don't need these roads. We need jobs."

Senegal hosted experts from Europe and Africa for a summit on illegal immigration this month at a luxury hotel sticking up on the horizon a few miles from "Beverly Hills." But few officials ever visit the beaches from where pirogues leave.

"We have our traditions. We have respect. We are ready to work to our last breath. We have our dignity," said Seck. "The government does not see this. We are people who want to work."

More than 470 illegal migrants reach tiny Sicilian island in latest boat arrivals
24 June 2006

ROME (AP) - More than 470 illegal migrants crammed in tiny boats reached the Sicilian island of Lampedusa overnight and Saturday morning, the latest in a string of clandestine arrivals, port authorities in Palermo said.

Authorities said a boat carrying 165 people reached Lampedusa in the middle of the night, while 50 people in two more boats were rescued at sea by the Coast Guard.

On Saturday morning, 256 more people reached the island after being rescued at sea from five different boats, port officials said.

Authorities did not immediately know where the migrants were from.

Generally, such migrants are taken to a holding center on Lampedusa. Under Italian law, those who do not have permits allowing them to work or stay in Italy will be expelled.

Thousands of illegal migrants attempt to reach Italy's coastline and islands every year, with most of the vessels -- often rickety craft -- setting out from North Africa. Many are intercepted at sea by Italian police and coast guard patrols.

Italy has been trying to encourage northern African countries, especially Libya, to crack down on smugglers who depart from their shores with their passengers, many of whom pay thousands of dollars for the journey.

New waves of immigrants reach Italy, Malta

ROME, June 25, 2006 (AFP) - Italian coastguards Sunday picked up four boatloads of would-be immigrants off its Mediterranean island of Lampedusa and a fifth made landfall in Malta, authorities in the two countries said Sunday.

Since Saturday some 600 clandestine immigrants have reached Lampedusa, south of Sicily, and the authorities have been forced to mount an airlift to the mainland as the local reception centre, already housing 300 people, has been overwhelmed.

The first boat to arrive carried 34 people, the second 29, among them three women, and the fourth had 41 passengers, including seven women, six children and two people suffering from illness.

The fourth craft had about 100 people on board.

Another boat was taken in off Malta. There were 25 people aboard, among them five women, one of whom was pregnant and gave birth shortly after the boat was picked up.

Since the beginning of the year Malta has taken in 400 immigrants. Italy and Malta are favourite destinations for would-be immigrants who make the sea crossing from Africa.

Human traffickers are active in Tunisia and Libya and despatch immigrants in the direction of Lampedusa, the nearest part of Europe, some of whom end up in Malta.

In 2005, 207 boats were intercepted off the coast of Italy, carrying a total of 22,000 prospective immigrants. Authorities recovered 70 bodies.

Over 250 illegal immigrants arrive in Malta, two dead

VALLETTA, June 28, 2006 (AFP) - Over 250 illegal immigrants, including two dead, were brought to Malta early Wednesday after being rescued by two army patrol boats.

The fishing vessel, carrying 263 men and three women, was sighted 70 miles southeast of the Mediterranean island Tuesday.

The commander of the armed forces, Brigadier Carmel Vassallo, said that the immigrants at first refused assistance, saying they wanted to continue their journey to Italy. But after negotiations, and seeing that their engine had broken down, they agreed to be transferred to Malta.

"This was an emergency situation", Vassallo added.

It was by far the largest number of illegal immigrants to land on Malta, taking total arrivals this year to over 700, exacerbating the already difficult situation on the island.

On Tuesday five police officers and soldiers were injured during a riot involving illegal immigrants.

Some 300 people in a centre housing immigrants near the international airport tried to march on the capital Valletta to protest against their living conditions and delays in processing their asylum applications.

Nearly 2,000 immigrants are housed in reception centres on Malta, the smallest EU state with 400,000 inhabitants.

Three African immigrants found dead in boat off Canary Islands
7 July 2006

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Three African immigrants were found dead in a boat intercepted Friday in waters off the Canary Islands, the Spanish Red Cross said.

The boat was carrying 49 immigrants, including the three dead bodies and four children, when it arrived at the island of Tenerife.

Some were treated for exhaustion or hypothermia and four had to be taken to a hospital, said Red Cross spokesman Austin Taylor.

"Yesterday the sea was very rough, there was also strong winds and waves up to 3-4 meters (10 feet) high, so they probably got lost or had problems with the engine, and we suspect they might have run out of provisions," he said by telephone from Tenerife.

Thousands of people try to reach Europe through Spain each year, an increasing number of them setting off in small boats from Mauritania and Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara. The government says it catches virtually all of them.

Bodies of 3 suspected African smugglers found in Hong Kong on freight ship
9 July 2006

HONG KONG (AP) - The bodies of three African men were discovered aboard a Liberian-registered freighter moored in Hong Kong waters, police and a news report said Sunday.

Ship officials first found one of the bodies outside a container and contacted Hong Kong police, who discovered another two bodies inside one of the containers on the ship in Hong Kong waters Friday, spokesman Edwin Hung said.

A police spokesman said the trio were suspected of trying to smuggle themselves out of Africa, a regular port of call for the vessel.

The ship, which frequently carries goods between West Africa and southeast Asia, originated in Congo and was identified by Hong Kong's Ming Pao Daily News as Liberian-registered and French-owned Delmas Forbin. Hong Kong police, however, would only confirm that Congo was the point of embarkation.

The spokesman said the three men, who have not been identified, had been dead for two to three weeks and that their bodies had decayed. The three men were not registered as ship's crew and police suspect they were illegal immigrants, Hung said.

The exact cause of the deaths was not immediately known, the police spokesman said.

Ming Pao said the container in which the bodies were found had a hole in it that is believed to have been used by the smugglers for breathing.

Hung said police plan to inspect the other containers on the ship Sunday.

Autopsy: Cuban migrant died of head trauma
By KELLI KENNEDY
10 July 2006

MIAMI (AP) - A woman who died while attempting to reach the Florida Keys in a speedboat crowded with Cuban migrants sustained fatal head injuries, according to preliminary autopsy results released Sunday.

Amay Machado Gonzalez died and four others were injured Saturday when their boat, which held 31 migrants, ignored orders to stop and attempted to ram a U.S. Coast Guard vessel, authorities said. Coast Guard crew fired two shots into the vessel's engine to disable it.

"She has blunt force head trauma. I think it's consistent with her striking the boat," Monroe County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Hunter said.

The one-page report said Gonzalez also sustained blunt injuries to her arms, legs and back. Authorities said she was crammed into the small boat and jostled in the rough seas.

"There was no way for these people to brace themselves against the impact of the boat slamming into the rough seas," Coast Guard Capt. Phil Heyl said in a statement.

The Coast Guard intercepted the boat around 6:30 a.m. about 4 miles south of Boca Chica, Coast Guard officials said. Gonzalez was pronounced dead as she was being transported to a hospital.

Eddie Dominguez, 43, of Miami said his nephew, Augustin Uralde, 24, was also onboard the boat and was married to Gonzalez. He said she was 24.

"We were shocked, very despondent," said Dominguez. "We had no idea that they were even going to make this attempt."

A pregnant woman onboard the vessel was transported to a hospital and released to federal custody Sunday, said Ivan Ortiz, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Three men sustained minor injuries.

All the migrants are in federal custody, Ortiz said. Among them are three suspected smugglers, though they were not immediately charged.

Concerned relatives of the migrants met with Cuban activists Sunday to discuss legal action.

"There is a human being dead. Shooting at a vessel loaded with civilians is not a practice that should be done by a democratic country," said Ramon Saul Sanchez, head of the Democracy Movement. "The high seas can't be deemed as the Wild West where shootouts happen."

More than 250 illegal immigrants land on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa
14 July 2006

ROME (AP) - More than 250 illegal immigrants landed on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa early Friday in two boats, port authorities in Palermo said.

The first boat arrived around 1:30 a.m., carrying 243 passengers, including seven women and fourteen children. A second boat arrived around 9 a.m., carrying 27 passengers.

All passengers were said to be in good health.

The nationalities and point of departure are not known at the moment, the port authorities said.

Each year, thousands of illegal immigrants make the crossing from North Africa, often in fragile vessels that sink before reaching the Italian coasts or islands such as Malta that lie on the way.

Immigrants who reach Lampedusa are usually taken to a holding center, where they undergo identity checks.

Italy has been trying to encourage northern African countries, especially Libya, to crack down on smugglers who leave their shores with their passengers, many of whom pay thousands of dollars for the journey.

Police arrest two after 55 immigrants land on Greek island

ATHENS, July 15, 2006 (AFP) - Greek maritime police on Saturday arrested two crew members from a boat that brought 55 clandestine immigrants to the island of Evia in the Aegean Sea.

The immigrants, 12 of them children, all arrived safely and in good health and were transferred to the immigration centre in Evia's capital Halkida, Greece's commercial fishing ministry said in a statement. The ministry added that it was continuing to search for immigrants.

The 15-metre (50-foot) yacht was picked up by a patrol boat off the east coast of Evia.

The Aegean Sea is commonly used by immigrants from the west coast of Turkey heading for western Europe.

250 more African immigrants arrive in Canary Islands

TENERIFE, July 17, 2006 (AFP) - Spanish rescue services said they had picked up 250 African illegal immigrants who reached the Canary Islands on Monday in makeshift vessels, after intercepting 163 others over the weekend.

A first vessel, believed to have left Guinea Bissau ten days earlier, brought 83 Africans to Tenerife. A second boatload of 77 people, including four children, was picked up on the south of the island just after dawn.

A further 90 people were intercepted during the afternoon on the neighbouring island of La Gomera.

The total number of illegal immigrants picked up this year in the island chain, located off the Atlantic coast of Morocco and Western Sahara, has reached about 11,000, much higher than the 2002 record of 9,929.

During a visit to the Canaries last Wednesday, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero announced the launch of the Frontex plan to combat clandestine immigration to take effect from this week.

His move came a month after 14 countries drew up a plan to stem the tide of illegal immigration from Africa to the Canaries under Frontex -- the agency for the coordination of the European Union's external frontiers.

The Frontex plan aims to provide technical assistance to identify immigrants and help Spain send them home while furthermore deploying joint sea and air surveillance to monitor the Atlantic coast of Africa.

Zapatero said Friday he believed that increased cooperation with Mauritania and Senegal, from where many emigrants set sail for Spain, would help to stem the flow, pointing out that only 500 people had been intercepted in June compared with 3,500 in May.

New wave of migrants reach Italian islands

ROME, July 17, 2006 (AFP) - Hundreds of migrants were intercepted off Italy's southern coast early Monday, in the latest wave of clandestine immigration in the country, maritime authorities and media reports said.

Customs police said three vessels carrying more than 160 people had been intercepted off the southern islands of Lampedusa and Sicily, while the ANSA news agency said another boat with 219 migrants aboard had been spotted near Lampedusa.

"Two boats were intercepted near Lampedusa, the first with 34 people aboard, and the other with around 30 migrants," customs police Colonel Marcello Marzocca told AFP.

He said another vessel loaded with around 100 people had been arrested near Porto Empedocle in southern Sicily.

Lampedusa lies south of Sicily and is the main landing point for migrants trying to get to Europe from Tunisia and Libya.

In 2005, authorities intercepted 207 vessels carrying a total of almost 22,000 migrants off Italy's coast. Seventy bodies were recovered during the same period.

Turkey intercepts illegal immigrant boat

ANKARA, July 18, 2006 (AFP) - Turkish security forces intercepted Tuesday a fishing boat carrying would-be illegal immigrants, mostly Syrians, off the country's southern coast, the coast guard said.

Twenty-seven clandestine passangers -- 26 Syrians and a Lebanese -- were aboard the boat, which was stopped in the sea off the Mediterranean port of Mersin, a statement said.

The illegal immigrants and the Turkish captain were detained and handed over to the judicial authorities, it added.

It was not clear where the boat was heading.

Turkey lies on a major people-smuggling route from Asia to Europe and illegal immigrants are detained on a daily basis.

The immigrants mostly try to cross to neighboring Greece by land or brave sea journeys to Greece or Italy, often aboard dangerously unseaworthy vessels.

More migrants land in Italy in unrelenting influx

ROME, July 22, 2006 (AFP) - Italy's maritime authorities intercepted more than 70 would-be illegal immigrants off the southern coast Sunday, bringing to more than 500 the number to have arrived from north Africa in the past few days.

Coastguard vessels picked up 27 migrants from their fishing boat 33 nautical miles south of Sicily and brought them to the port of Pozzallo. The coastguard said the vessel was listing and had engine problems. The group included five women and a 20-month-old baby.

The coastguard also intercepted 47 migrants aboard a rubber boat south of the island of Lampedusa. One of four women on the boat was taken to hospital.

Lampedusa lies south of Sicily and is the main landing point for migrants trying to get to Europe from Tunisia and Libya.

In 2005, authorities intercepted 207 vessels carrying a total of nearly 22,000 migrants off Italy's coast. Seventy bodies were recovered during the same period.

Three more migrants found dead aboard Canaries-bound boat

TENERIFE, Spain, July 27, 2006 (AFP) - The bodies of three migrants were discovered aboard one of six boats intercepted late Thursday en route to Spain's Canary Islands, where some 300 people have arrived within the past 24 hours, a source with ties to the regional rescue coordination center said.

The deaths bring to 10 the number of would-be immigrants from Africa who have died trying to reach the islands, a gateway to Europe, in the past 10 days.

The source told AFP the three were found aboard a makeshift vessel carrying 27 other African emigrants, four of whom were in serious condition.

Regional government head Adan Martin said Monday it was "unacceptable" that 12,300 people had arrived since January in the archipelago, easily surpassing the previous record of 9,929 for the whole of 2002.

The Canaries, despite being hundreds of kilometers (miles) from the African coast, have become more popular havens after security was heightened in Spanish enclaves in north Africa, which were stormed by thousands of migrants last year.

Sunbathers aid African migrants caught trying to reach Spain's Canary Islands
30 July 2006

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Sunbathers on a beach in Spain's Canary Islands came to the aid of 88 African migrants whose boat ran aground Sunday, giving them food, water and blankets after their dangerous trip in search of a new life, authorities said.

That boat was the last of three to arrive Sunday on the island of Tenerife, carrying a total of 205 travelers, some of them women and children.

People on the beach were seen rushing to help the Africans with whatever they could provide until police and Red Cross officials arrived to attend to them.

As the beachgoers waited for help to arrive, some drove all-terrain vehicles to the shore to drive the weakest of the travelers off to receive first aid.

The Interior Ministry office in the Canary Islands said that boat held 88 people, and two others that came ashore earlier in the day were carrying 35 and 82 people.

Thousands of migrants try to reach Spain's Canary Island archipelago in the Atlantic each year, an increasing number of them setting off in boats from Mauritania and Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara. Many die during the long and dangerous crossings.

Nine died this week in the latest wave of arrivals.

Spain says more than 11,000 Africans from some of the continent's poorest countries have made the trip so far this year, double the total for all of 2005. More than 1,000 are reported to have died attempting the voyage since late last year.

Spanish police blame latest migrant influx on 10-day gap in patrols

TENERIFE, Spain, July 31, 2006 (AFP) - Mass arrivals of would-be immigrants to Spain who have risked their lives getting to the Canary Islands came during a 10-day lull in Spanish Mediterranean maritime patrols, a police source told AFP on Tuesday.

The source said the maritime civil guard's Rio Duero vessel, which since last autumn has overseen mixed Spanish-Mauritanian patrols in the waters off the west African state, recently gave its crew a 10-day rest.

He said that a new crew were beginning a tour of duty on Tuesday.

Recent days have seen hundreds of migrants reach the Spanish island chain.

On Sunday, three makeshift boats reached Tenerife carrying about 200 exhausted Africans, some of whom were given assistance by sympathetic sunbathers as they collapsed onto the beach.

Many of the migrants had sailed out of the Mauritanian port of Nouadhibou, Spain and Morocco having in recent months stepped up joint efforts to prevent immigration by sea across the much shorter Strait of Gibraltar.

Spain told its EU allies it cannot cope without outside help, and the overburdened Canary Islands authorities are expecting four vessels earmarked by the European Union to help patrol the west African coast.

Italy is set to contribute a plane fitted out with sophisticated radar to help pinpoint vessels headed for Spain.

The total number of arrivals this year has hit the 13,000 mark -- 230 more arrived on Monday -- some 3,000 more than the 2002 full-year record of 9,929.

Eleven would-be immigrants are known to have died over the past fortnight, with the death toll for the year now standing at 16.

The Canaries, despite being hundreds of kilometres (miles) from the African coast, became a preferred gateway to Europe over the past year after security was heightened in Spanish enclaves in north Africa, which were stormed by thousands of migrants last year.

African dies among latest migrants to Spain's Canaries

TENERIFE, Spain, Aug 4, 2006 (AFP) - An African died trying to reach the Spanish Canary Islands as the latest in a huge wave of desperate immigrants reached the islands on Friday, local authorities said, warning of more arrivals in the coming days.

One migrant was found dead on a crude fishing boat, known as a "cayuco", also carrying 65 other people, which arrived on Friday morning on the western Canary island of Tenerife.

An AFP journalist said the others on the boat appeared to have arrived safely. Earlier on Friday morning another boat carrying 103 immigrants had landed on the neighbouring island of Gran Canaria.

The fatality brought to 17 the number of deaths this year among migrants who travel for days by boat from the shores of west Africa in a bid to reach mainland European soil via the Spanish territory.

Local police predicted that the wave of immigration would continue. "All this is nothing compared to what we expect" in the coming days, a police source told AFP.

More than 13,000 would-be immigrants have landed on the Canaries since the beginning of this year -- breaking the previous record of 9,000 people in 2002.

The figure for this week alone neared 1,000 when a boat landed with 150 migrants on Thursday.

The flow of people arriving from sub-Saharan Africa towards Europe via the Canaries increased in recent days after Spain and Mauritania temporarily suspended joint patrols off the shores of the west African country.

The long and dangerous trip from Mauritania has become a favoured route in recent months after Spain and Morocco stepped up joint efforts to prevent immigration by sea across the much shorter Strait of Gibraltar.

Overburdened authorities on the Canaries are now waiting for four more boats to be sent by the European Union to help patrol the west African coast.

Mauritania: 16 African migrants die from ocean voyage to Spain's Canary Islands
11 August 2006

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania (AP) - Mauritanian police said Friday that 16 African migrants died in their attempt to make the treacherous sea journey from West Africa to Spain's Canary Islands.

Fisherman found the boat carrying 97 Africans Thursday off the coast of Mauritania. Survivors said they threw the bodies of 11 people overboard after they died from lack of food or water during the voyage, said police official Yahfdou Ould Amar.

Another five people died later in a Mauritania hospital after the rescue, the Mauritanian police official said. The boat had left days earlier from Dakar, the capital of Senegal, hundreds of kilometers (miles) to the south.

Thousands of people try to reach Europe through Spain each year, with an increasing number setting off from Mauritania and Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara.

Many die during the dangerous crossing. Those who are intercepted are kept in holding centers. Authorities then have 40 days to repatriate or release them.

Spain says more than 11,000 Africans from some of the continent's poorest countries have made the perilous trip to the Canary Islands so far this year, already doubling the total for all of 2005.

More than 1,000 are reported to have died attempting the voyage since late last year. The European Union is stepping up its efforts to help weak West African governments patrol their waters in hopes of stemming the tide of would-be immigrants.

15 bodies found on Mauritanian beach presumed to be African migrants trying to reach Spain
27 August 2006

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania (AP) - The bodies of 15 people found washed ashore on the beaches of Mauritania's capital are believed to be those of African migrants who were trying to reach Spain's Canary Islands by boat, police said Sunday.

No maritime emergencies were reported, leading authorities to believe that the dead were illegal migrants whose boat had capsized off the West African nation's coast, said regional police official Mohamed Abdallahi.

Spain said that in the first 21 days of August alone, more than 4,800 immigrants, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, had landed on its shores. Nearly all of them landed or were intercepted at the Canary Islands in the Atlantic, southwest of the mainland.

So far this year, more than 18,300 people have reached the Canary Islands, the highest total ever, Spain's Interior Ministry said.

Hundreds of African migrants are reported to have died this year while trying to cross the Atlantic to the Canaries in often-ramshackle and barely seaworthy boats.

Moroccan and Spanish authorities have cracked down on migrants making the land journey across the Sahara Desert toward Europe, prompting greater numbers of Africans to try to reach the Canary Islands by boat. Many leave from Senegal, to Mauritania's south, and hundreds of miles from the Canaries.

Fourteen immigrants found on small Greek island in Aegean Sea

ATHENS, Aug 27, 2006 (AFP) - Fourty-four illegal immigrants were arrested by harbour police on the small Greek island of Inousses in the Aegean Sea, the merchant marine ministry said on Sunday.

The 42 men and two women, who said they were Palestinians, were discovered by a patrol boat on Saturday after two small sunken boats were spotted off the coast.

The migrants, who most likely launched their attempt to enter the European Union from neighbouring Turkey, were transferred to the nearby island of Chios for questioning.

Greece is a popular entry point for thousands of would-be migrants from Asia and the Middle East seeking a better life in Europe.

Hundreds of African migrants arrive in Canaries, Sicily

ROME, Sept 2, 2006 (AFP) - Eight small fishing boats carrying more than 300 African migrants arrived Saturday in Spain's Canary Islands, while a further 19 people were intercepted off Sicily as they attempted to make it to Europe.

One boat with 76 people on board landed at Puerto de los Cristianos on the island of Tenerife, a Red Cross spokesman told AFP. One woman in poor health was taken to a hospital, he said.

Three other boats, including one with 116 passengers, were bound for Tenerife, while two other boats with more than 100 people arrived at Grand Canary island and two more boats at the small islands of La Gomera and El Hierro, officials said.

The 19 men intercepted off Sicily, southern Italy, said that eight of their companions had died on the 12-day voyage and that they had thrown the bodies overboard, the Ansa news agency reported. The migrants originated from Eritrea in east Africa.

Tens of thousands of migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, have tried to make it to Europe this year in search of better lives, many undertaking treacherous sea journeys in rickety boats.

More than 20,000 people have arrived in the Canaries since the beginning of the year, already four times the number of people in 2005 and double the previous record number reported in 2002.

On Friday, the Spanish government announced it would host before the end of the month a ministerial meeting of eight southern European states to discuss how to counter the problem facing the Canary authorities.

The countries concerned are Spain, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Slovenia, First Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said.

The meeting will discuss maritime surveillance patrols, sea rescue and the identification and repatriation of immigrants, she said.

It will also elaborate a formal proposal for the next European summit in December.

Five arrested for transporting illegal immigrants to Crete

ATHENS, Sept 2, 2006 (AFP) - Greek police have arrested five crew members of a boat that ran ashore on Crete with some 119 illegal immigrants, one of whom died on the journey, the merchant marine ministry said Saturday.

Greek authorities had been searching the region for six missing people, as one of the illegal migrants said that originally the group numbered 126 people.

Police found on the island's coast five men who had transported the immigrants in a 12-meter (39-feet) boat which ran ashore in the Elafonissos Palaihora region of southwest Crete.

The arrested men will be brought before a prosecutor in Crete, the ministry statement said, without giving their nationalities or other details.

The would-be immigrants now number 118 as divers found the body of a man who drowned on the journey, the ministry said.

The group, all men between the ages of 25 and 40, claim to be Palestinians. They have been taken to a center in Kissamou where they are being lodged and fed.

Authorities did not indicate the immigrants' departure point nor their destination.

At least 450 migrants arrive at Spain's Canary Islands in 8 boats
By JUAN MANUEL PARDELLAS
10 September 2006

SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Canary Islands (AP) - At least 450 boat migrants landed on the Canary Islands on Sunday as calm seas prevailed between Africa's northwest coast and the Spanish archipelago, officials said.

With such favorable weather conditions, EU police helicopters from Spain, Portugal, Italy and Finland have been on the lookout for boats crowded with migrants, police said. The helicopters are based in Mauritania and Senegal in Africa, as well as the Spanish islands of Tenerife and Fuerteventura.

So far this year, more than 23,000 migrants have made the dangerous crossing to the islands -- with more than 3,800 landing just this month -- straining emergency facilities to the limit and causing an outcry among regional and Spain's political leaders.

Spanish officials have made an urgent appeal in recent weeks for more EU funding and regional cooperation.

Eight boats arrived on four islands Sunday, while at least three boats were still expected, an Interior Ministry spokeswoman said, speaking on customary condition of anonymity.

Three empty boats were also found on beaches of Gran Canaria, the spokeswoman said, and five suspected migrants were detained nearby.

September normally heralds calm waters in the Atlantic Ocean between Africa and the Canary Islands southwest of mainland Spain, a coastal rescue service spokesman told The Associated Press on Saturday.

The north-to-south prevailing trade winds that powered early sail voyages to the Americas are at their weakest this time of year when they descend from speeds of 20-25 knots to around 5-10 knots, the spokesman said.

On Friday Minister of Interior, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, met with his counterpart from Senegal, Ousmane N'Gom, to discuss repatriation terms. Many of the migrants landing on the Canary Islands come from Senegal.

Reception centers used to detain migrants on the Canary Islands are full to overflowing, the interior ministry said. With capacity for 5,566 persons, camps Saturday contained 6,203 would-be immigrants.

As some Africans leave Canaries, first Asians arrive

PUERTO DE LOS CRISTIANOS, Spain, Sept 15, 2006 (AFP) - No sooner had Spain repatriated a group of African immigrants overnight Thursday than yet more illegal migrants landed at the swamped Canary Islands -- this time the first ever arrivals from Asia.

A metal boat, unlike the wooden fishing boats which some 25,000 sub-Saharan Africans have used to reach the Canaries this year, reached the southern Tenerife port of Puerto de los Cristianos with more than 200 Pakistanis on board.

"They are Pakistanis," Red Cross team coordinator Osvaldo Lemus said.

A spokesman for local authorities on the island told AFP it was the first time that Asians had tried to land on the Canaries.

Only hours earlier, some 60 illegal immigrants had arrived in the northern Senegalese port city of St Louis, flown back from the Canaries despite Senegal having Thursday afternoon forced Spain to cancel two flights set to repatriate about 100 expelled Senegalese to Dakar.

After the Air Europa plane touched down, regional governor Ass Sougoufara welcomed the travellers, saying: "You tried an adventure, you've returned in difficult conditions but that's life, it's not the end of the world.

"You have been dignified, courageous and brave, it's not finished, you can find success in your country," he added to applause from the 60, all young men.

The two planes did not take off as scheduled Wednesday night from Fuerteventura island as authorities in Dakar would not authorise their landing in the Senegalese capital "for technical reasons," sources said.

Spain had announced Wednesday that it was expelling Senegalese illegal immigrants from the Canary Islands under an agreement with the government in Dakar.

But Thursday night's dramatic turn of events left the Canaries authorities and their Spanish counterparts with a new problem.

It was still not clear early Friday exactly where the Pakistanis had set sail from but according to El Pais newspaper, Pakistanis have been paying 500 dollars to Senegalese traffickers after flying to Dakar in the hope of securing a sea passage to Greece.

An El Pais correspondent in Dakar said a group of Pakistanis had been in Senegal since June and quoted one man as saying that "all we want now is to go back to Pakistan."

In the Canaries, 18 of the Pakistanis, including several children, were immediately taken in suffering from poor health by the local Red Cross and medical services, regional official Jose Segura said.

Two were taken to hospital suffering from dehydration with a Red Cross spokesman describing their condition as stable, while the remainder were placed under police guard.

"We gave them water, tea, clothes and medical assistance. They were hardly speaking, they didn't ask for anything," said a Red Cross coordinator.

When the "pirate ship" was spotted about two miles off Las Galletas beach south of Tenerife late Thursday "a naval patrol went to the scene and went on board," Segura said.

"They found that there was no one on the bridge and that the people who had acted as crew were hiding among the rest of the passengers," he said, describing their leaky vessel as "half-fishing boat, half-freighter".

In another development late Thursday, Canaries regional president Adan Martin said 500 African children out of 836 minors who have arrived in the Canaries this year were to be transferred to the Spanish mainland.

Socialist Party chairman Jose Blanco meanwhile told Spanish television Friday the expulsions to Senegal were justified.

"Of course we are concerned at the situation in the Canaries when we see the state these people are in.

"But Spain does not have the capacity to absorb more illegals.

"What is happening is the result of (the immigrants') feeling of hopelessness" in their own countries," said Blanco, who denied that the government's decision to give an amnesty to some 600,000 mainly South American migrants last year was partly to blame for the influx in the Canaries.

"We have to find a solution which helps to boost the development of these countries. And we must implicate the EU more," Blanco said.

Later Friday, Spanish Secretary of State for Immigration affairs Consuelo Rumi was due to address the UN General Assembly on immigration in New York as part of an ongoing "high level dialogue" on the effect of migration on economies worldwide.

Death toll mounts as refugees flee to Yemen: UN

GENEVA, Sept 22, 2006 (AFP) - Thirty-nine people fleeing Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia are thought to have died and 53 are missing since early September after trying to reach Yemen by sea, the UN refugee agency said Friday.

Some 2,143 people have made it across the Gulf of Aden since September 2, according to records compiled by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Yemen.

"At least 22 smugglers' boats carrying more than 2,100 people across the Gulf of Aden have been reported by authorities in Yemen since the beginning of September," said Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the UNHCR.

"Thirty-nine people have reportedly died making the perilous journey, many of them by drowning, and another 53 are reported missing," he told journalists.

Some of the victims were killed by their smugglers, according to the agency.

Eye witnesses on three boats carrying 294 people that crossed from Somalia on September 16 said 10 of them were beaten to death by their smugglers and their bodies were thrown overboard.

Five more were killed after the boats were intercepted by the Yemeni coastguard and one of the boats capsized during a gunfight.

Yemen is host to more than 88,000 refugees, including 84,000 Somalis, according to the UNHCR.

Greece denies dumping immigrants into sea off Turkey

ATHENS, Sept 26, 2006 (AFP) - The Greek authorities on Tuesday categorically denied dumping a boatload of illegal immigrants into the sea off Turkey's western coast, causing six to drown and leaving another 31 to be rescued by Turkish coastguards.

The Greek foreign affairs ministry rejected reports in the Turkish media suggesting Greek authorities were involved in the deaths and accused Ankara of not cooperating in the fight against illegal immigration.

Turkish officials had -- albeit reservedly -- quoted the survivors as saying they had been dumped into the sea off the Turkish coast by a Greek vessel early on Tuesday, after reaching the Greek island of Chios on Monday evening.

"No clandestines were turned away from Chios and no-one was arrested," a spokeswoman for the Greek merchant navy ministry told AFP.

The 31 survivors -- including Algerians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians and Tunisians -- were rescued by local Turkish villagers and coastguards. A further two migrants were reported missing.

Greek foreign affairs spokesman George Koumoutsakos took the opportunity to defend his government's efforts to police its eastern borders, which mark the edge of the European Union.

He described Turkey's response to demands for cooperation on the issue as "far from satisfactory".

Turkey lies on a major people smuggling route from Asia to Europe and catches illegal migrants almost on a daily basis.

The would-be immigrants mostly try to cross to neighbouring Greece by land or brave sea journeys to Greece or Italy, often aboard dangerous, unseaworthy vessels.

Both Greece and Italy are members of the European Union.

Nearly 100 would-be immigrants arrive at Italian islands

ROME, Oct 3, 2006 (AFP) - Two boats bearing a total of 72 would-be immigrants arrived overnight on the Italian island of Lampedusa, while a third arrived in Sicily with 24 aboard early Tuesday, the ANSA news agency reported.

The arrivals follow the interception of some 450 boat people on Monday.

They embarked in Libya, taking advantage of good weather to undertake the voyage of 300 kilometers (180 miles) to Lampedusa or a further 200 kilometers to Sicily.

The boats come in all shapes and sizes. The largest intercepted on Monday by the Italian coastguard carried 230 people, while the smallest held only six, of whom two were seriously dehydrated.

The reception center at Lampedusa was already overwhelmed by Monday's arrivals, since its normal capacity is 190. The immigrants were to be taken later to transit centers elsewhere in Italy.

Interior Minister Giuliano Amato said last week that around 16,000 people have been picked up near Italian shores this year as of September 18.

48 migrants trying to reach Puerto Rico rescued

SANTO DOMINGO, Oct 1, 2006 (AFP) - Forty-eight illegal immigrants trying to reach the US territory of Puerto Rico were rescued by Dominican and US authorities when their boat capsized, a report said Sunday.

The US Coast Guard and the Dominican navy were involved in the rescue, Carlos Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Dominican navy, told local media.

Forty-one men and seven women were plucked from the sea, of a group that originally numbered 60, the report said.

Authorities believe the 12 missing people may have reached land, since the shipwreck happened just eight nautical miles from the eastern tip of the Dominican Republic.

Each year, thousands of people attempt illegal trips, many in inadequate boats, from the Dominican Republic to nearby Puerto Rico.

HK ports 'lose favour with illegal migrants'
Tough new surveillance forces middlemen to look further afield for routes to smuggle their clients, says department
Agnes Lam
3 October 2006
South China Morning Post

Illegal migrants using fake travel documents are steering clear of Hong Kong as a transit point because of toughened surveillance, the Immigration Department says.

They are turning to other Asian and Middle Eastern cities with less rigid enforcement, according to Yim King-sum, head of the department's anti-illegal migration agency. As a result, the number of arrests of middlemen and their clients using fake passports had dropped dramatically in the past four years.

The number of cases involving forged travel documents seized at all border checkpoints fell from more than 3,500 in 2002 to about 2,300 last year and just over 1,600 in the first eight months of this year.

In 2004, 1,161 people were arrested for using fake travel documents. This fell to 860 last year and about 500 during the first eight months of this year.

There is no separate breakdown for numbers at the airport, which accounts for most cases.

Mr Yim said that apart from deploying plain-clothes officers to patrol around the airport, the agency, formed in 2004, had increased the number of travel document inspections at boarding gates from fewer than 5,000 in 2003 to more than 16,000 last year.

"Most human traffickers tend to avoid Hong Kong after we tightened travel document checks. They prefer airports such as Dubai, Bahrain, Africa and countries in Southeast Asia such as Thailand and Malaysia," Mr Yim said. "We have injected more resources into carrying out inspections since our agency's establishment in 2004 as our major tactic is to fight people-trafficking, and it seems our effort is paying off."

He said the United States, Canada, western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Korea remained the most popular destinations for illegal immigrants.

The most common smuggling method, said Mr Yim, was to use a legitimate plane ticket and a real passport to get inside the airport's restricted area, then use a fake passport and another boarding pass before getting on the plane.

The swap is usually made in a toilet in the restricted airport area.

"Toilets seem to have become quite popular among middlemen working for human trafficking syndicates," Mr Yim said. "They choose washrooms in order to avoid being seen by others."

A double booking is made, with one ticket under the client's real name to a city in Asia or on the mainland, and the other - made by the middleman - to a destination further afield, such as Canada.

The exchange takes place after both have checked in with their real passports and received boarding passes, which will be used to gain access to restricted areas in the airport.

The client will then be given a forged travel document and exchange boarding passes with the middleman, discarding his own passport and boarding pass.

Last November officers caught a middleman working for a snakehead syndicate giving a fake passport and a boarding pass from one toilet cubicle to another in which a mainland woman was waiting.

"We have to constantly do risk assessment for different locations in the airport and deploy officers to do inspections at different areas. Toilets are one of our targeted places. Transit lounges and smoking rooms are also high-risk spots where middlemen make exchanges with their clients," Mr Yim said.

20 would-be immigrants drown off Canary Islands

TENERIFE, Spain, Oct 5, 2006 (AFP) - Twenty would-be immigrants drowned and 11 were saved on Thursday off Spain's Canary Islands on a ramshackle boat, a police source said quoting witnesses.

The survivors told police 20 of their fellow passengers drowned after their vessel broke down on the high seas, the source said, adding a merchant navy boat had come to their aid during the night to take them into port at La Luz de las Palmas on the island of Gran Canaria.

The Canaries prefecture confirmed to AFP that 11 Moroccans were rescued by a Belgian container vessel 110 miles (160 kilometres) south of Gran Canaria but was not able to confirm the fatalities.

A Canaries rescue services official told AFP a group of illegal immigrants were on the rubber boat fitted with an outboard motor which appeared to have broken down as they headed for the islands where more than 27,000 people have landed since the start of the year, three times the previous annual record.

Sub-Saharan immigrants usually use larger vessels to attempt a long and dangerous voyage whereas those from Maghreb states tend to attempt the crossing in smaller boats.

Although the past week had seen a drop in the number of arrivals, which hit a peak of 900 on September 5, the local government prefect's office said 99 people have been intercepted in the islands since the start of the month.

Even before Thursday's developments rescue workers in Spain had estimated that hundreds of people, and likely more, had died attempting the perilous crossing from west Africa to the Canaries this year.

Some non-governmental organisations say the death toll could be as high as 3,000.

Italian coast guard comes to aid of boat filled with illegal immigrants off Sicilian island
14 October 2006

ROME (AP) - Italian coast guard vessels came to the aid of a boat filled with some 300 illegal immigrants in the Mediterranean Saturday near the tiny Sicilian island of Lampedusa, authorities said.

Rescuers told Sky TG24 TV that stormy weather complicated efforts to tow the boat to the island, but that all the immigrants arrived safely.

Lampedusa has a holding center where illegal immigrants stay while identity checks are carried out to see if they have a job or family awaiting them in Italy or if they have valid reasons to seek political asylum. Those who don't meet the criteria are given expulsion orders.

Boats filled with people from Asia and Africa who have paid smugglers for the voyage arrive nearly daily on Italian shores.

Coast guard and border police motorboats and helicopters patrol Italy's southern waters to intercept the migrants.

Greece intercepts 124 migrants, arrests 'smugglers'

ATHENS, Oct 17, 2006 (AFP) - The Greek coastguard has intercepted 124 clandestine immigrants on Aegean islands close to the Turkish coast and arrested two Greeks on suspicion of human trafficking, officials said Tuesday.

The largest group of 110, claiming to have come from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka and including 73 men, 11 women and 26 children, was detained on the eastern Aegean island of Farmakonisi, the merchant marine ministry said.

A 16-metre (52-foot) sailboat transporting them, the 'Corsaro II', is of unknown provenance and carried no flag, a ministry press officer told AFP.

They will be temporarily housed at a reception centre on the neighbouring island of Leros.

Two Greek men also found on the vessel will be detained pending an investigation.

The ministry also announced that 14 male would-be migrants from Afghanistan have been detained on the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos since Monday night, arriving in two batches from the Turkish coast aboard dinghies.

Greece faces a steady inflow of clandestine immigrants along its considerable Aegean Sea coastline and through its northeastern border with Turkey.

According to Greek government figures, 13,000 arrived by land and a further 10,000 by sea in 2006 alone.

More than 400 illegal migrants land on Sicilian island of Lampedusa
22 October 2006

ROME (AP) - Italian authorities detained more than 400 illegal migrants who landed on the tiny Sicilian island of Lampedusa on Sunday, aided by calm seas in the Mediterranean, officials said.

In the larger group, an 18-meter (60-foot) boat crammed with 403 people was intercepted by two Italian coastal patrol boats about 5 miles (8 kilometers) south of Lampedusa, said Daniele Battaglia, of the port authority in Palermo, the Sicilian capital.

The group had set out from the Libyan coast and included 21 women, one of whom is pregnant, and a 10-month-old baby, Battaglia said.

Hours later, a second boat containing 36 people safely arrived on the island, which is closer to Africa than to mainland Italy.

The nationalities of the migrants were not immediately determined, Battaglia said.

The arrivals, who were all in good condition, will be transferred to a temporary holding center on the island. The center often overflows, as it is designed to accommodate only 190 people.

Thousands of migrants, often setting out from the African coast, try to reach Italy's coasts every year. If the migrants do not have the necessary documents and a job awaiting them in Italy, they are issued deportation papers.

More than 100 clandestine immigrants caught off Italian coast

ROME, Oct 23, 2006 (AFP) - Italian coastguards picked up more than 100 clandestine immigrants Monday near the Italian island of Lampedusa, south of Sicily, bringing the total of new arrivals to 600 in a 24-hour period.

Customs officials and local coastguards told AFP that they had stopped three boats with 109 would-be immigrants onboard early Monday.

Another boat was stopped on Sunday evening with some 30 people aboard near Lampedusa, which is about 300 kilometres (186 miles) north of the Libyan coast and 200 kilometres south of Sicily.

Another 20 were also caught on the Santa Maria del Focallo, in southeast Sicily, during Sunday night.

Meanwhile, coastguards intercepted almost 440 immigrants Sunday morning, including 403 aboard a single fishing boat.

They transferred all the immigrants to a transit centre in Lampedusa, which is designed to host a maximum of 190 people.

From there, authorities sent a boat with around 100 immigrants to other centres in Sicily to be identified and to determine if they are eligible to seek asylum.

The immigrants were of Bangladeshi and Afghan origin, according to customs officials.

Two dead, four missing after immigrant shipwreck near Malta

VALLETTA, Oct 24, 2006 (AFP) - Two people died and four are missing after a boat carrying 23 illegal immigrants capsized near Malta, officials said Tuesday.

The shipwreck took place 10 kilometers (six miles) from the island's shores, an army spokesman said. Three ships dispatched to the location managed to rescue 17 people, while two others were fished out of the Mediterranean shortly after by a helicopter.

A man and a pregnant women later died at a hospital, the spokesman said.

A second boat carrying 21 illegal immigrants arrived safely to the island Tuesday morning, he added.

It was unclear where the immigrants came from, but Malta has been deluged this year by a wave of mostly illegal African immigrants bound for Europe. Many have died making the perilous journey on often dilapidated vessels.

Illegal migration: Louis Michel calls for a closer Africa-EU dialogue

DAKAR, Oct 26, 2006 (AFP) - European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid Louis Michel pleaded Thursday during a visit to west Africa for a "closer dialogue" between the EU and illegal immigrants' home countries to combat the migration problem.

"In the face of the human tragedy of this phenomenon of illegal immigration ... I think a closer dialogue between Senegal, one of the nations at the origin of the migratory flow, the relevant countries of the region and the European Union is indispensable," Michel told journalists in Dakar after a meeting with Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade.

Michel announced having "proposed to the bilateral ambassadors of the European Union ... to return in mid-January with a proposition for a common program to offer real perspectives on this question and on the young migrants who have attempted to come to our countries."

The European commissioner underscored that above and beyond border control, "stepping up aid for economic development" was necessary for a lasting solution to this problem.

Michel also announced new cooperation projects between the EU and Senegal.

"In the short term, two actions are planned: a contribution to surveillance operations but also to repatriation and rehabilitation, upwards of 1.8 million euros (2.3 million US dollars), and local support for activity of non-state actors who work in this area of more or less one million euros," he announced.

"For the medium term is planned an increase in financing of an urban roadworks program ... that will be achieved with 13 to 18 million FCFA (19.8 to 27.4 million euros / 25 to 35 million US dollars) and will create close to 4,000 jobs for a year," he added.

During his visit in the Senegalese capital, Michel visited the Port of Dakar Wednesday afternoon, which serves as a base for Frontex.

The European agency Frontex has set up mixed patrols between Senegal and several European countries, including Spain, Italy and Portugal.

Aboard planes and ships, its agents are charged with intercepting off the coast of Senegal boats of illegal immigrants, who have reached the Spanish Canary Islands in record numbers this year -- approximately 27,000.

During his west African tour dedicated to cooperation toward development and the migration issue, the European commissioner has already visited Guinea. He is expected in Mauritania on Friday.

More than 200 illegal migrants spotted near Sicilian island of Lampedusa
30 October 2006

ROME (AP) - Italian authorities responded to a rescue call from a boat carrying more than 200 illegal immigrants south of the tiny Sicilian island of Lampedusa on Monday and escorted it back to shore, Palermo port authorities said.

Two Coast Guard and one Navy vessel escorted the boat carrying 204 people to Lampedusa, but authorities still had not questioned the migrants as of Monday night, and they did know know what countries they were from.

"We don't know anything yet, just that they're in good health conditions," said Lt. Paolo Majoli.

The Coast Guard found the boat still in the water after one of the migrants, who had a satellite phone with him, called a friend in Italy who in turn alerted authorities, Majoli said.

Majoli said the boat started again after two officers from the Coast Guard climbed on board and took the commands.

Thousands of migrants, often setting out from North Africa, try to reach Italy's coasts every year. If the migrants do not have the necessary documents and a job awaiting them in Italy, they are issued deportation papers.

Arrivals in Lampedusa are generally transferred to a temporary holding center on the island.

3 stowaways caught, 1 dies after jumping into water
1 November 2006

ELIZABETH, N.J. (AP) - Three stowaways who boarded a freighter in Panama were caught as they ran from a ship docked at Port Elizabeth on Wednesday afternoon. A fourth drowned after jumping into the water to try to elude authorities.

The men, whose identities were not released, got off the freighter Hanjin Wilmington at about 1:50 p.m., said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the seaport.

The boat was docked at berth 98 at the APM Terminal when the four tried to run from the terminal grounds, Coleman said.

APM security and Port Authority police responded, and quickly caught three of them. The fourth jumped into the water, Coleman said.

"The police officers threw him flotation devices, but he was unable to grasp them," Coleman said. "He went under the water, and that was the last we saw of him."

Dive teams from several rescue agencies looked for the man's body, but called off the search shortly after 5 p.m.

The three others were in the custody of the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection.

Boat with 200 migrants caught off Italy

ROME, Nov 19, 2006 (AFP) - Italian coastguards caught a vessel carrying nearly 200 illegal migrants off the island of Lampedusa, the ANSA news agency reported on Sunday, the latest in a vast wave of clandestine arrivals.

Four children and 11 women were among the people on board the vessel which the coastguards towed after discovering it some 25 kilometres (15 miles) south of the Mediterranean island.

Lampedusa receives daily arrivals of clandestine migrants trying to reach European soil. More than 16,000 illegal immigrants en route to Italy were intercepted in the first nine months of 2006, according to the interior ministry.

Lying towards the north African coast, southwest of the island of Sicily, Lampedusa is a frequent port of call for migrants seeking to enter Europe illegally from Africa.

EU targets smuggling of Africans to Europe
By James Kanter
International Herald Tribune
Thursday, November 30, 2006

Seeking to prevent another season of drowning off European coasts, officials said Thursday that round-the-clock patrols would begin next spring to try to save lives and deter large-scale smuggling of migrants from Africa.

Franco Frattini, the vice president of the European Commission, said the measures could lead to the creation of a European coast guard which would replace national systems that often fail to detect smugglers who open new routes when others are shut down.

"We must fight illegal immigration and trafficking of human beings, not least of all to prevent the terrible exploitation and loss of life which so often results," Frattini said.

He said EU-wide laws to punish employers in Europe who hire illegal migrants would be proposed early next year. He also called for the creation of offices in African countries, where would-be migrants could find out whether jobs awaited them in Europe before they left.

The maritime borders of Europe were under unprecedented pressure from illegal migration this year. Frattini said on Thursday that thousands of people had died during attempts to reach the coasts of Italy, Malta and Spain.

More than 17,000 illegal migrants came ashore in the Canary Islands in Spain during the first seven months of this year compared with 4,715 during 2005, according to the European Union. Thousands more have entered Europe from Morocco and Libya.

Frattini's proposals are focused on Africa and aimed at intercepting more boats during the main migration season — which runs from spring to autumn — to prevent drownings and to send a message discouraging traffickers from attempting to ship migrants from countries like Mauritania, Mali and Senegal.

EU officials said a coastal patrol network could make it possible for frontline countries like Italy, Malta and Spain to coordinate schedules, pool resources and exchange information in "real time" as traffickers are detected.

But a majority of member states resist relinquishing sovereignty over matters relating to immigration, making it difficult for the European Union to fashion a long-term strategy.

Florian Geyer, a migration expert at the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels, said a key problem was that countries are at odds over controlling migrants once they arrive at the borders.

"You've got countries like Spain that take a more open approach because it's booming agriculture and construction industries heavily rely on new workers," Geyer said. "But then you've also got countries like Germany, worried about newcomers crossing Europe and depriving governments of the ability to decide who should be part of their society and who shouldn't."

One way EU governments have tried to coordinate on immigration matters is by creating an agency called Frontex, which is staffed with about 70 people in Warsaw and currently operates on a budget of about €16 million.

This year, Frontex coordinated resources contributed by EU member states in two temporary sea operations aimed at stemming migration to the Italian islands of Sicily and Lampedusa, to Malta, and to the Canary Islands.

In the case of the Canary Islands, where the operation is continuing, Portugal has contributed one boat to Spain's patrol efforts, while Italy has contributed one airplane and one boat.

A Frontex spokeswoman, Daniela Munzbergova, said the agency already had carried out studies to tackle another wave of illegal migration in 2007 along Europe's southern coast. She said Frontex was still waiting for member states to make their pledges of boats and aircraft for operations in 2007 — but she expected more sea patrols next year.

The size of the patrols would "depend on the difference between political promises and real contributions," she said. She welcomed efforts by Frattini "to put pressure on the member states to set up continuous operations."

Frattini's proposals are "a very important step forward," said a spokesman for Spain's Interior Ministry who followed Spanish protocol by speaking on condition of anonymity.

"It's a little early to know exactly how Spain is going to contribute," he said. "But Spain will surely be a part of this, and it will be involved very actively."

Cristiano Aliperta, a spokesman for the Italian Coast Guard, which is responsible for lifesaving search-and-rescue missions that frequently involve intercepting boatloads of immigrants on unreliable vessels, said it was "possible the collaboration could be repeated" with Frontex this year.

Munzbergova said Frontex was keeping the timing and location of operations already planned for 2007 secret to prevent smugglers mapping out routes.

Adding to a sense of momentum, the six most powerful countries in the European Union will send a letter to the bloc's presidency on Friday calling for controls to be made a "major priority." In the letter, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland say Frontex needs more resources and commit to fully back such an initiative themselves.

Elisabetta Povoledo in Rome, Renwick McLean in Madrid and Katrin Bennhold in Paris contributed to this article.

U.N.-led meeting in Palermo discusses plight of refugees arriving illegally by sea
5 December 2006

PALERMO, Sicily (AP) - U.N. refugee agency officials, sea captains and survivors of increasingly frequent Mediterranean crossings by illegal migrants on rickety boats exchanged experiences Tuesday at a forum aimed at improving rescue operations.

The Geneva-based U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees was one of the organizers of the one-day seminar, which included discussion of international maritime rules and guidelines for ship captains, fishermen and coast guards for rescue operations.

Every year, thousands of people, many of them setting out from North Africa, try to reach Italy's coasts undetected and then make their way up the peninsula to find work or family in continental Europe. If they don't have proof of a job awaiting them in Italy, they are ordered expelled, although many never leave, authorities say.

"Today, people are put on absolutely inadequate boats and left to their own devices," said Laura Boldrini, a spokeswoman for the U.N. agency who moderated the forum.

"Often the helm is given to those who haven't seen the sea before," said Boldrini. "Often the survivors tell us that they see boats sailing by but nobody stops to rescue" them.

Italian authorities say smugglers of illegal migrants often take thousands of dollars from their passengers and then either tell the voyagers they are on their own or escape later in motorized dinghies, abandoning the migrants at sea.

Fatah, a Somali refugee who survived a crossing which claimed the lives of 74 people in 2003, recalled how he had lost hope before being rescued by a Sicilian ship off the coast of the island. The man was only identified by organizers by his first name.

"I didn't think it was going to rescue us," he said, referring to the 15 survivors stranded with him on a rickety craft for days without water or food. "Other ships had sailed by, looking at us and going away. We would burn the clothes, shout for help, but nobody would come."

The U.N. agency presented recommendations about the technical procedures ship officials have to follow after a sea rescue. In particular, ship captains do not have to bring the rescued people back to the countries they fled from or inform the authorities of these countries about personal data of the rescued passengers, U.N. officials said.

"The arrivals by sea are a small part of the total of arrivals of would-be refugees in this country, however they are more dramatic," Boldrini said. "Once ship officials have rescued these people, they need to be able to bring them to a safe place where they can apply for asylum."

Ship officials might fear being investigated if rescues involve them with the illegal migrants, authorities said.

"Those who rescue immigrants at sea do so to save their lives and do not commit any crime," Agrigento prosecutor Ignazio De Francisci told The Associated Press on the sidelines of the forum. "Sometimes. though, there is the suspicion that they (the rescuers) might ask for money or someone dies during the rescue operation. In that case, we will need to investigate."

In a dramatic example of illegal migrants' plight at sea, the Cap Anamur relief group's ship rescued voyagers in the Mediterranean in 2004 and then searched for a friendly port for weeks before it was allowed to dock in Sicily.

Three Germans are being tried in Sicily in the case on charges of aiding illegal immigration after they rescued 37 people. The defendants -- former Cap Anamur president Elias Bierdel, ship captain Stefan Schmidt and first officer Vladimir Daschkewitsch -- have denied wrongdoing, saying they rescued the migrants at sea.

According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, there have been 7,800 asylum request in the first 10 months of 2006, and nearly 9,500 in all of 2005.

Immigrants rescued after attempt to reach Italy on jetski

ROME, Nov 30, 2006 (AFP) - Two wetsuit-clad north African immigrants were rescued Thursday after trying to cross the Strait of Sicily on a jetski, Italian harbor authorities told AFP.

The two men, a Tunisian and a Moroccan, had left the Tunisian port of Kelibia Wednesday night bound for the southern Italian island of Pantelleria, some 43 miles (70 kilometers) away.

The men were about 12 miles (20 kilometres) off the coast of Pantelleria when the jetski ran out of gas and started to drift. They then used their mobile phone to call Italian authorities for help.

A coast guard speedboat was dispatched from the port of Pantelleria to recover the two would-be immigrants, who were found in good health. The men were then taken to a detention center in Tampani, Sicily.

Like its neighbor Spain, Italy is currently grappling with massive surges of immigrants, most of whom come from Africa.

In 2005, authorities intercepted 207 vessels carrying a total of nearly 22,000 migrants off Italy's coast.

Italian coast guards said it was the first time clandestine immigrants had used a jetski to make the journey from north Africa to Italy.

Canoe washes up in Senegal after 16-day attempt to reach Spain

DAKAR, Dec 14, 2006 (AFP) - A ramshackle boat washed up on the Senegalese coast after a failed 16-day attempt to reach Spain's islands of the Canaries, leaving at least one migrant dead, police said Thursday.

"Twenty-nine people disembarked yesterday evening from a dugout canoe on a beach in Yoff, (north of Dakar)," police spokesman lieutenant colonel Alioune Ndiaye told AFP.

"They were transferred to a hospital in the district and one of them died," he said without specifying cause of the death.

Others are under medical observation suffering from dehydration and low temperatures.

There were fears that many others could have perished at sea, police said.

According to initial information collected by the police, the migrants took off from Diogue in Senegal's southern Casamance region and had spent 16 days at sea before making a U-turn around the coast of Mauritania's northern seaside city Nouadhibou.

According to some reports, there were more than 100 people aboard the ramshackle boat when they set off on the perilous trip.

Trips to the Canaries which had relented since the end of September have resumed with the islands reporting this week a total 30,300 arrivals this year alone, three times the last record of 9,929 in 2002.

The latest arrivals confirm fears by Spanish authorities that the lull experienced in October and November was just temporary.

The Spanish islands, viewed as a stepping-stone to work and fortune for impoverished Africans, have been battling with the record number of illegal immigrants mainly from West Africa.

They announced last month the reinforcement of coastal monitoring.

Hundreds of would-be immigrants intercepted off Sicily

ROME, Dec 19, 2006 (AFP) - As many as 500 would-be immigrants aboard a ship off the coast of Sicily were intercepted by the Italian coast guard on Monday and taken to the island, the ANSA news agency reported.

Their steel ship some 20 meters long had been spotted in the afternoon by Italian fishermen, and the authorities dispatched a dozen ships to intercept it.

Numbering between 400 to 500 according to ANSA, the migrants whose origin was not immediately known, were transported to the island and were to be taken to reception centres for immigrants to determine their identities.

Boats carrying immigrants usually carry no more than 200 people.

Sicily and the small island of Lampedusa farther south are favourite points of entry for illegal immigrants travelling from Libya and Tunisia.

Between January and September 16,000 illegal immigrants were intercepted by Italian authorities, according to official figures.

On Saturday 102 migrants went missing off the Senegalese coast in the Atlantic after their ship capsized. Only 25 people survived the shipwreck.

Illegal immigrants rescued off Algerian coast

ALGIERS, Dec 20, 2006 (AFP) - About 11 Algerian would-be immigrants in an inflatable boat were rescued early Wednesday by the coast guard off the coast of the Algerian city of Oran, Algeria's navy said.

The navy statement said officials in Oran, about 430 kilometers (265 miles) from the capital Algiers, reported that "coast guard units conducted search operations" and the people were found about 0130 GMT in "a deplorable state".

Two of those rescued were taken to hospital, while the remaining nine were cared for by the coast guard, the navy said.

On Monday, the coast guard arrested 49 other illegal immigrants as they were heading for the Spanish coast in a fishing boat.

Last month 65 Algerians were sentenced to two months in prison near Oran after having attempted illegal emigration.

From January through October this year, 42 would-immigrants died at sea while trying to travel from the Algerian coast to Europe, and 27 others were reported missing, according to the Algerian navy.

Two immigrants drown near Greek island of Samos

ATHENS, Jan 17, 2007 (AFP) - Two clandestine immigrants presumed of Libyan origin drowned early Wednesday near the Greek island of Samos, and a rescue operation was in progress to try to find five others, the merchant marine ministry said.

"Two people, a man and a woman, were found dead, and a further seven managed to reach the shore of Samos," a merchant marine press officer told AFP.

"From the testimony of the survivors, the immigrants are of Libyan origin and were attempting to reach the island on a wooden boat that sank," she added.

According to the rescued immigrants, five more people are in the water.

"We are looking for two men and three children," local deputy prefect Stelios Thanos told private radio Flash.

"We located the survivors after they lit a fire on the beach where they landed," he added.

Local weather conditions are reported mild.

The eastern Aegean Sea island of Samos lies just opposite the Turkish coast, and is a routine landing point for people-smugglers.

"We have 250 people at our local reception centre, which is full," the mayor said. "We don't know what to do if more people arrive."

Three Greek coast guard vessels, a Super Puma rescue helicopter and two Greek warships are participating in the effort to locate the missing.

Thirty four dead after migrant boats capsizes off Yemen

GENEVA, Dec 29, 2006 (AFP) - Thirty-four would-be migrants died and 124 were missing at sea after Yemeni police this week opened fire on a group of boats attempting to smuggle 515 people from Somalia to Yemen, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said Friday.

In a previous toll, UNHCR reported 17 people dead and 140 missing when two of four boats carrying mainly Somalis and Ethiopians capsized in the Gulf of Aden late on Wednesday after Yemeni authorities spotted the vessels approaching the coastline.

Survivors said Yemeni forces opened fired as two boats offloaded passengers. Yemeni officials said the smugglers returned fire.

The third and fourth boats, anchored further offshore under the cover of darkness, tried to escape back to sea. But one of the vessels capsized near Al-Baida after becoming unbalanced by agitated passengers.

The other was forced back to shore by Yemeni coastguard boats and a helicopter but capsized in heavy seas just 300 metres (yards) from the beach.

More than 25,800 people have been recorded arriving in Yemen from troubled Somalia this year. Somalis reaching the country are automatically given refugee status if they apply because most are fleeing violent conflict.

Ethiopians are not automatically considered refugees but can put their cases individually. Of the more than 88,000 registered refugees in Yemen, 84,000 are Somalis.

Yemeni authorities said Thursday that they captured all 17 smugglers and their four boats, and that a search operation was still underway for survivors.

Somalis on the boats said they came from the troubled areas of Bur-Hakaba, Baidawa and Beledweyne in central Somalia. Many said they had fled as a result of the current conflict between the Ethiopian-backed Somali government and the Islamic Courts Union.

UNHCR fears the current upsurge in fighting in southern and central Somalia could create a new wave of refugees and is asking neighbouring countries to keep their doors open to those seeking sanctuary.

According to UNHCR records, at least 330 people have died this year making the trip across the Gulf of Aden and almost 300 are missing, including the 124 in Wednesday's incident.

Mauritania refuses to receive boat of migrants
By AHMED MOHAMED
5 February 2007

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania (AP) - A boat of about 200 migrants -- most believed to be from Pakistan -- was waiting off the Mauritanian coast Monday after the West African country refused to receive the craft intercepted by Spanish authorities.

Mauritania "is not involved with this boat or its occupants, and has refused to give permission for the boat to land," government spokesman Babah Sidi Abdallah said.

Mauritania has agreed to help in the repatriation of migrants that use the country as a launching point, but Abdallah said this boat appeared to have left from Guinea-Bissau, a country much further south along the coast.

The migrants were rescued by a Spanish vessel on Saturday after their boat broke down off the coast of West Africa, according to the Spanish Foreign Ministry

The Foreign Ministry said the Spanish vessel originally planned to tow the migrant boat to the nearest safe port in Senegal, but the Senegalese government said it was not equipped to help the migrants.

More than 24,000 people were caught trying to reach Spain's Canary Islands last year in boats from West Africa. Most of those taking the crowded wooden boats are African, but undocumented Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and other Asians have also been intercepted. For them, Africa can be the final way station on a much longer voyage to Europe that involves complicated smuggling routes over a number of continents.

The European Union has been patrolling waters along the African coast to try to stem illegal immigration. Spain and France have also promised funding to countries along the coast to help provide other options to those who say the dangerous trip to Europe is their only chance at a better life.

The boat was waiting in international waters near the northern Mauritanian fishing port of Nouadhibou, Abdallah said.

Greek coast guard detains 51 illegal immigrants

ATHENS, Feb 7, 2007 (AFP) - The Greek coast guard on Wednesday intercepted 51 would-be migrants on the eastern Aegean Greek island of Chios, the merchant marine ministry said.

The migrants, who lacked papers but identified themselves as Somali, Iraqi and Palestinian, have been taken to a local hospital for health tests.

The group said they had sailed from the neighbouring Turkish coast on two wooden boats.

The Greek eastern Aegean Sea islands are frequently used by people-smugglers as landing points for illegal immigrants seeking access to the European Union.

Boat With Migrants Docks in Mauritania
By AHMED MOHAMED
12 February 2007

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania (AP) - A boat carrying 400 illegal migrants was finally allowed to dock in Mauritania on Monday, after being stranded for 10 days in international waters off the northwest African country's coast.

The wooden boat, known as the "Marin 1," came ashore at the fishing port of Nouadhibou, 290 miles north of the capital of Nouakchott, said Mohamed Yahya Ould Mohamed Vall, the governor of Nouadhibou.

The migrants are Africans and Asians, including a large number of immigrants from Pakistan, officials said.

As the boat landed, six people were evacuated to hospitals by the local Red Cross. Vall said there were several "serious cases of dysentery and dehydration."

The sick are the only passengers who will be allowed to stay in the town, he said.

"Only the sick who require hospitalization will be allowed to stay at Nouadhibou and after they get well, they will be sent to Spain and out of Mauritania to their country of origin," Vall said.

The vessel had spent more than 10 days at sea off the coast off the African coast as Spanish and Mauritanian officials argued about what government should take them in.

Mauritania eventually agreed to let the rusty, broken down vessel dock and allow its occupants ashore, on the condition that Spain would supply medical facilities and planes to fly them out.

The boat is believed to have departed from further south on the West African coast en route to Spain's Canary Islands, but ran into mechanical trouble before being intercepted by Spanish officials.

UNHCR says at least 30 migrants drowned off coast of Yemen
13 February 2007

GENEVA (AP) - At least 30 Somali and Ethiopian migrants trying to reach the Arabian peninsula drowned when their boat capsized off Yemen, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday, citing Yemeni officials.

UNHCR said unconfirmed reports from survivors placed the death toll as high as 78.

The accident happened Monday when a vessel smuggling 120 people across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia to Yemen capsized as it approached the coast.

"Apparently bodies are washing ashore in various places," Ron Redmond, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told reporters in Geneva.

Military officials in Yemen told UNHCR they rescued 40 people from the capsized boat and buried the bodies of 30 others, Redmond said. But the agency said survivors who made it to a UNHCR center in Yemen said up to 78 people perished.

Three other boats carrying a total of 355 migrants to Yemen reached the shore safely, Redmond said.

According to UNHCR figures, more than 27,000 people fled to Yemen from Somalia last year and several hundred died making the perilous crossing. So far this year about 1,700 people have made the journey, with 29 recorded deaths before Monday's incident.

Yemen has increased coastal patrols, forcing smugglers to make the journey across the Gulf of Aden by night and increasing the risk of accidents.

Many of the Somali migrants are fleeing violence in their homeland, where government forces recently battled a radical Islamic movement with the help of troops from neighboring Ethiopia.

Five illegal immigrants die off Greek coast: 20 more missing

ATHENS, Feb 17, 2007 (AFP) - The bodies of five illegal immigrants have been found and another 20 are missing off the Greek island of Samos after their boat sank, the Merchant Marine Ministry said Saturday.

The one survivor found so far told the Greek authorities that the boat, which was travelling with 26 Somalis on board, sank in the eastern Aegean Sea near the Turkish coast on Friday evening.

Two Greek patrol boats, a navy vessel and a Super Puma helicopter were searching the waters, said a ministry statement.

Ten days ago at least seven people were found drowned after another smuggling boat sank off Samos.

The Aegean Sea is a common route for boats smuggling illegal immigrants, mainly from Asia, into Europe.

Greek coastguard detains 54 Iraqi migrants

ATHENS, Feb 22, 2007 (AFP) - The Greek coastguard on Thursday intercepted 54 would-be migrants identifying themselves as Iraqis on the eastern Aegean Greek island of Chios, officials said.

The group of 40 men, eight women and six children, have been taken to a local hospital for health tests.

The migrants said they had sailed from the neighbouring Turkish coast on two wooden boats.

They were found on two separate coasts of the Greek island, not far from where they landed, the merchant marine ministry said in a statement.

Another 51 would-be migrants were intercepted on Chios earlier this month.

The Greek eastern Aegean Sea islands are frequently used by people-smugglers as landing points for illegal immigrants seeking access to the European Union.

130 Kurds hidden on fishing boat disembarque in Italy

ROME, Feb 24, 2007 (AFP) - Some 130 Kurdish illegal immigrants landed Saturday on the southern Italian shores of Calabria, just days after 19 people drowned trying to reach Sicily, a media report said.

The Kurds, who had traveled on an unlisted fishing vessel, said they had begun their voyage at a small port in Turkey a week ago, according to the Ansa news agency.

Most of the immigrants were young men in good physical condition. Police and military arrested the immigrants once they were already on land.

Italy's southern shores, especially the islands of Sicily and Lampedusa, are popular destinations for illegal immigrants, who most often arrive by ship from north Africa, just a few dozen kilometres (miles) away.

These crossings are not without danger. This week, at least 19 would-be immigrants to Italy drowned in the waters between Tunisia and Sicily.

Last year, Moroccans made up the largest group of illegal immigrants trying to come to Italy, followed by Egyptians, Eritreans and Tunisians.

8 Haitians die, 44 missing after boat catches on fire
1 March 2007

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) - A boat carrying Haitian migrants caught fire off the coast of the Dominican Republic, leaving at least eight passengers dead and 44 missing, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman said Thursday.

The boat was traveling from the northern Haitian town of Cap-Haitien to the Turks and Caicos islands when it caught fire about 25 miles north of the Dominican Republic, U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Petty Officer Barry Bena said Thursday.

Two migrants were pulled alive from the water Wednesday and brought to a hospital in Montecristi on the Dominican Republic's north coast. The two adults, a man and a woman, were being treated for burns and dehydration, Dr. Maria Belliard said.

It appeared the migrants had been in the water for at least a day when they were spotted by a U.S. yacht cruising from Panama, said Capt. Jose Antonio Carrero, commander of the Dominican Navy's northern operations.

"They found just the two people, not the boat, not anything," Carrero said.

Eight of the passengers were found dead in the Atlantic Ocean.

A U.S. Coast Guard cutter, two airplanes and a helicopter were searching for other survivors, Bena said. A Dominican Navy ship assisted in rescue efforts Wednesday.

"We've been told by the U.S. Coast Guard to expect several bodies tomorrow," said Fritzner Barthelemy, an inspector with the Haitian coast guard.

Authorities did not know when the blaze occurred, when the ship set sail or what caused the fire.

Fleeing grinding poverty and frequent political turmoil, thousands of Haitians take to the sea each year, sailing on flimsy boats north toward Florida. Nearly all of them are intercepted and repatriated to their homeland.

The number of boat migrants increased after a 2004 revolt toppled then president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, sending the economy into tailspin and touching off a bloody wave of street violence.

------

Associated Press writer Stevenson Jacobs contributed to this report from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

At least 10 Haitian migrants drown trying to reach Bahamas
12 March 2007

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - At least 10 Haitian migrants drowned last week after the captain of the boat that brought them to the Bahamas reached a sand bank and ordered them to swim ashore, Haiti's ambassador to the country said Monday.

Seventeen Haitian men who were on the same boat reached the island of Exuma, where police investigators plan to interview them before they are sent back to Haiti.

Haitian Ambassador Louis Joseph, who interviewed the survivors, said the boat was carrying more than 30 people when it set out Monday from the northwestern town of Port-de-Paix and arrived offshore Thursday shortly before midnight.

"From there the passengers tried to get to the beaches and suddenly they realized that the sea was very deep," Joseph said. "Those who know how to swim arrived to the beach but those who did not died."

A boater discovered four bodies Friday morning and called police, who found the others floating in nearby waters. The victims -- nine men and one woman -- were buried over the weekend at a public cemetery.

Joseph said the captain of the boat also was Haitian, but he declined to provide other details, citing the investigation.

Fleeing poverty and political instability in their homeland, thousands of Haitians attempt perilous ocean voyages to reach the Bahamas each year.

"This is a situation we are experiencing every week, every day, when your countrymen die and you know exactly why -- because they are looking for jobs, for opportunities," he said.

Earlier this month, nearly 50 Haitian migrants were lost at sea after their homemade boat sank as they attempted to reach the Turks and Caicos Islands. Survivors said the fiberglass vessel caught fire after its fuel tank exploded north of the Dominican Republic.

Seven illegal immigrants drowned in Aegean, 11 survive

ATHENS, March 17, 2007 (AFP) - Greek coast guards on Saturday retrieved the bodies of seven illegal immigrants who drowned in the Aegean Sea, while 11 were found alive on the nearby island of Samos, authorities said.

Searches were going on for four others believed still missing, as survivors said there were 22 people in all aboard the vessel when it sank.

The merchant marine ministry was unable to give the nationalities or ages of those concerned, but said the dead included a child.

The wooden boat had set out from the nearby Turkish coast earlier Saturday.

Authorities launched a search and rescue operation with three patrol ships and a Super Puma helicopter after being alerted by one of the survivors.

It was the fourth time this year a boat carrying illegal immigrants had sunk off Samos. In the previous shipwrecks, 14 bodies were retrieved and another 30 passengers were listed as missing.

In 2006 at least 23 would-be immigrants drowned and 15 were reported missing.

Amnesty International: Dominican Republic violates international law with abuse of Haitians
The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 21, 2007

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic: A major human rights group on Wednesday accused the Dominican Republic of systematically mistreating Haitian migrants who cross the border fleeing violence and seeking economic opportunity.

In a 58-page report, Amnesty International said immigration raids and government-sanctioned discrimination against Haitian migrants, many of whom are illegal, violated both United Nations conventions and international court rulings.

The Dominican foreign ministry declined comment, saying government officials were still reviewing the London-based group's findings.

Haitians in the neighboring Dominican Republic face discrimination, violence from private citizens and authorities and deportation without trial, according to the group's report, which was written by two investigators who visited the capital of Santo Domingo, border towns and migrant settlements last year.

An estimated 500,000 to 1 million ethnic Haitians live in the Dominican Republic, many in isolated slums. The two nations share the island of Hispaniola, and tense relations over the 362-kilometer (225-mile) border have often erupted in violence.

Though the migration issues stretch back generations and have been the subject of court cases and diplomatic efforts, the rights group hopes its findings will spur action by the Dominican government, other countries and bodies like the Organization of American States.

Gerardo Ducos, Amnesty International researcher on Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Cuba, said Haitian migrants help their eastern neighbor's economy by doing jobs Dominicans shun, such as the backbreaking labor of cutting sugarcane.

"The government and Dominican society fail to recognize the contribution of the Haitian labor force to the economy of the country," Ducos said at a news conference.

Haiti has been plagued by poverty, violence and political instability and Haitian migrants see the Dominican Republic, with a population of 9.2 million, as a comparative land of opportunity — even though many are exploited as cheap labor in agriculture and construction.

Amnesty investigators called for careful legal deportation procedures to replace mass repatriations of Haitians, which they say round up as many as 30,000 people each year in raids so swift and indiscriminate they sometimes ensnare darker-skinned Dominican nationals.

The report alleges some of the worst abuses occurred during a 2005 operation, when immigration police rounded up 2,000 people following the killing of a shopkeeper, allegedly by two Haitian migrants.

Migrants reported being packed into trucks and vans, separated from their families and robbed of money, cell phones and other items before being driven hours without food or water to the border. President Leonel Fernandez condemned the police actions at the time.

The Amnesty report also urged the Dominican government to comply with a 2005 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to grant citizenship to the Dominican-born children of Haitian migrants who are often classified as "foreigners in transit."

Fernandez recently said he has no intention of changing the policy.

U.S. legislator says 101 Haitian migrants who landed in Florida likely to be deported
2 April 2007

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The United States will probably deport most if not all of the 101 Haitian migrants who landed off a South Florida beach last week, a U.S. legislator said Monday, warning others not to risk the dangerous voyage.
U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, a Florida Democrat, said the Haitians have little recourse under U.S. law to avoid being sent back to their deeply impoverished Caribbean nation.

"I do feel very strongly that a super-majority of them, if not all of them, will be repatriated under present U.S. policy," Meek told reporters at the close of a one-day visit to the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.

The 101 Haitians, many looking gaunt and exhausted, came ashore Wednesday north of Miami after spending at least three weeks at sea in a dilapidated sailboat. One man died in the crossing and three were taken to the hospital in critical condition.

Unlike Cubans, who are generally allowed to stay once they reach U.S. soil, most Haitians who illegally make it to the U.S. are sent back despite claims that they face persecution in their politically turbulent homeland.

Thousands of Haitians take to the sea on flimsy boats each year, heading north toward Florida to escape grinding poverty and frequent political turmoil in the Western Hemisphere's poorest country.

Last month, nearly 50 Haitian migrants are believed to have died when their homemade boat caught fire off the Dominican Republic.

No stowaways found yet on ship, sailor says
Mystery surrounds container ship from Portugal
Last Updated: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 | 11:24 PM AT
CBC News

Border officers in Halifax who have been searching a container ship suspected of carrying as many as 250 stowaways were coming up empty-handed Tuesday night.

The Cypriot-registered cargo vessel docked at the Halifax harbour earlier in the day, and has been the subject of an intense search by police and border guards all day.

But after seven hours, no stowaways had been found, according to some of the sailors who were on board.

Officers with the Canada Border Services Agency refused to comment on the investigation. Officials were planning a media briefing for later Wednesday.

But the CBC's Stephen Puddicome said one of the sailors from Ukraine stopped and spoke with reporters. He said the sailors initially thought the search was a big joke because of how difficult it would be for 250 stowaways to hide on a small ship.

"They are still searching each container, but as far as I know they [have found] nothing," said Victor Okun, the second engineer.

Halifax police and RCMP were at the port standing by, while the Red Cross and local emergency crews were ready to go in as needed.

Officials had been warned that the Cyprus-registered vessel arriving from Lisbon could hold a large number of stowaways — between 100 and 250, according to some unofficial reports.

The harbour pilot boarded the Cala Puebla before noon and brought the vessel in to the Halterm terminal near Point Pleasant Park.

Soon after, Canada Border Services, the lead agency in the case, began its search of the vessel.

Four hours later, port workers told CBC News that no stowaways had been found.

The 15 Canada Border Services officers broke the locks on each container.

The Cala Puebla began its journey in Italy, stopping in Spain before arriving in Portugal. It left Lisbon on April 1.

CBC News contacted the captain on Monday, who said that after he left Lisbon, he got a call from Portuguese authorities saying they believed there were stowaways on board. He said he searched the vessel and found no stowaways.

Carlos Fortuna, who works for the vessel's agent, Garland Navigation, said he expects Canadian officials will find out they've been misinformed.

"We find it hard to believe that 150 or 200 people would not be seen," Fortuna told the Canadian Press.
Searched in Lisbon

Fortuna said some containers were searched in Lisbon after Canadian government officials in Spain alerted Portuguese officials to the possibility of stowaways.

He said most of the containers are commercial refrigeration units that are sealed and airtight, but some of them would be loaded with food and ceramics and others would be empty.

Benjamin Perrin, a Canadian expert in human smuggling and trafficking, told CBC News that if there are stowaways on board, they may not be in good shape.

He said the stowaways will have likely been enclosed in a small space for many days, possibly with little or no food or water. There's a chance many could be ill, he added.

"Some might even be dead," said Perrin, founder of the Future Group, a Canadian organization aimed at combating human trafficking. "The immediate concern will be their safety."

Perrin called these cases "complex crimes" that usually involve an organized criminal organization.

With files from the Canadian Press

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:) Thanks for your support.

Some 250 African migrants arrive at Spanish islands in six boats
13 April 2007

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Nearly 250 migrants have arrived in Spain's Canary Islands in the past two days, officials said Friday.

Shortly after midnight, a boat carrying 112 sub-Saharan African arrived at Gomera island. The occupants, all male adults from countries including Senegal, Guinea Bissau, Gambia and Sierra Leone, told rescue workers they had spent some 10 days at sea, the spokesman said.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity as his government department does not allow him to be publicly identified.

Before dawn, another single-engine vessel carrying 81 migrants was detected in waters off the nearby island of Tenerife.

On Thursday, 53 would-be immigrants were caught aboard four other boats.

The influx of boats came after officials had announced that for the first three months of the year increased European Union patrols off the West African coast and repatriation and cooperation deals with African countries had seen the number of migrants arriving in the Canary Islands plunge to 1,905 from 4,498 for the same period last year.

Last year more than 30,000 immigrants were intercepted while sailing from Africa to the Canary Islands in small, crowded boats, and officials in the islands say more than 500 died along the way.

62 Somalis Missing After Capsizing
14 April 2007

SAN'A, Yemen (AP) - A smugglers' boat carrying Somali migrants capsized off Yemen's coast and at least 62 were feared dead, officials and local media said Saturday.

Survivors told authorities that the human traffickers forced them into the sea after seeing the Yemeni coast guard. It was not immediately clear when the boat, which was believed to be carrying 96 Somalis, capsized.

About 32 Somalis were rescued, a security official in the coastal Abyan province said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

Another local official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said survivors were taken to the Kharaz refugee camp in the city of Aden, 200 miles south of the capital San'a.

The local Al Ayman newspaper, quoting unnamed witnesses, reported that 16 bodies had washed ashore since Friday night and more could be seen floating in the sea.

Thousands of migrants try to reach Yemen from the Horn of Africa, where violence has escalated since Ethiopia intervened in the armed struggle between Somalia's U.N.-supported interim government and Islamic groups.

A week ago, Yemen said that about 5,000 illegal migrants from Ethiopia and Somalia had arrived here since January and that 395 had died while trying to cross by boat in the same period.

Many migrants drown or are killed by pirates and smugglers in the treacherous Gulf of Aden between Yemen and Somalia, authorities have said.

Guinea detains nearly 100 Asian migrants

CONAKRY, April 22, 2007 (AFP) - Authorities in the west African state of Guinea have detained scores of Asians trying to reach Spain by boat, sources told AFP.

"Nearly 100 Asians" are being held by police at Conakry's cultural centre, a resident of the mining town of Kamsar, 300 kilometres (180 miles) north of the capital, said.

"They were trying to reach Spain by boat but were intercepted today (Saturday)," he said, adding that the migrants were being questioned.

An official of the Boke region, where Kamsar is located, confirmed the detentions but did not give details.

"Police are investigating," he said.

No details were immediately available on the nationality of the Asians, the circumstances surrounding their interception or the type of boat used.

Citing other witnesses, the Kamsar resident said they were Indians and Pakistanis.

They had boarded the boat at Kamsar but returned to Guinea after they were detected by an unidentified patrol in international waters.

Rescued African migrants arrive in Senegal

DAKAR, April 26, 2007 (AFP) - Nearly 100 African migrants whose boat capsized as they tried to reach the Canary Islands were taken to Senegal on Thursday after at least two among them had died from hypothermia.

Ninety-one migrants had been aboard the skiff, including the two dead, when they were rescued off the coast of Mauritania, said Senegal Police Colonel Alioune Ndiaye.

They were first assisted by a fishing boat, then by a Spanish hospital ship.

Survivors told Spanish rescue workers another 10 passengers had died and their bodies were thrown overboard before the rescue.

Six of the passengers had been taken to Dakar hospitals, said Ndiaye. The Red Cross said 12 were injured.

There were a number of Senegalese among the passengers, but nationalities for the others had not yet been specified. Investigators were trying to find out where the boat left from.

Most were dressed in white T-shirts and sandals and carrying plastic bags when they arrived at the Dakar port, appearing exhausted, an AFP journalist saw. There were at least four women among them.

Meanwhile on Thursday, two illegal African migrants died in an attempt to reach the Canary Islands. They were traveling in a boat with 66 others who were rescued by the Red Cross when arriving at the Spanish island of Tenerife.

In a separate incident late Wednesday, Senegalese police arrested a group of 96 passengers and four smugglers who were believed to be preparing to leave by boat for Europe in the northern city of Saint-Louis, Ndiaye said.

The Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelego in the Atlantic Ocean off the northwestern coast of Africa, have become one of the main destinations for African illegal migrants hoping to get to Europe. They often try to make the journey in dangerous, makeshift boats.

Some 1,525 illegal migrants arrived at the islands by sea in the first quarter of this year, a 61-percent drop from the same period in 2006, according to an official count from island authorities.

The reduction has been viewed largely as a result of improved surveillance of the African coast and new diplomatic efforts by Madrid towards the migrants' countries of origin.

European border security agency Frontex, which has coordinated surveillance of the European Union's outside boundaries since 2004, has also stepped up its operations.

Iraqi immigrants rescued from stranded boat in Greece
26 April 2007

LAVRION, Greece (AP) - Authorities detained 141 illegal immigrants, most from Iraq, who had been rescued from a boat stranded near Athens on Thursday.

Police arrested four people suspected of smuggling the migrants, the Merchant Marine Ministry said.

The immigrants were given medical checks at a hospital in Lavrion, 55 kilometers (35 miles) southeast of Athens, before being taken to state-run hostels, the ministry said. One immigrant was later hospitalized with a fever.

Authorities initially had estimated that some 200 people were on the stranded vessel, which was tugged to the port of Lavrion. The rescue operation involved navy vessels and helicopters.

Port officials said there were 13 women and 15 children among the rescued immigrants, who had traveled in a 27-meter (90-foot) fishing boat from the coast of Turkey.

Greece is a busy transit point for human trafficking, with many illegal immigrants seeking access to European Union countries.

Haitian Migrants to U.S. Rises
30 April 2007

MIAMI (AP) - The number of Haitian migrants intercepted on their way to U.S. shores has risen, with nearly as many stopped in April as in all of last year, the Coast Guard said Monday.

More than 360 migrants brought aboard Coast Guard cutters on Friday and Saturday were returned to Haiti on Monday. Petty Officer Jennifer Johnson, a Coast Guard spokeswoman, said the boats they were traveling on were in bad condition.

"When we see a vessel that's so overloaded we have to make the decision to rescue them and take them on board our cutters," she said. Otherwise, she added, "the chances of them making it to the United States in one piece is slim."

A total of 704 Haitians were rescued from vessels in April, according to the Coast Guard count. That compares with just 43 in April 2006 and 769 in all of 2006.

The Coast Guard would not attribute the increase to a single cause.

Haiti has suffered through repeated coups, a brutal right-wing military regime and a bloody 2004 uprising that toppled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Today, Haiti has only a few thousand police for a country of 8 million. Unemployment and despair are rife, leading thousands to flee to the United States in rickety boats each year.

While the number of migrants has been high, it is much lower than the early 1990s, when tens of thousands of Haitians fled to the United States. About 31,430 came in 1992 alone, the Coast Guard said.

Since 2004, when 3,078 Haitians were intercepted, the number had been falling.

Unlike the case of Cubans, who are generally allowed to stay once they reach U.S. soil, most Haitians who illegally make it into the U.S. are sent back.

Survivor of capsized Dominican fishing boat recalls terror in Atlantic
26 April 2007

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) - Fisherman Jose Enrique Tejada clung to a gas container in the moonlit Atlantic and prayed for help after giant waves capsized the boat he was on, throwing him and dozens of other men into the ocean.

Some began swimming toward lights on shore 20 miles away, but Tejada and his nephew floated toward two men who had found a piece of driftwood. They waited for rescuers.

The sun rose. A plane droned overhead and the men frantically waved at it. But there was no sign of rescue as the sun set. The four men fell into despair.

After nightfall, they heard the clatter of a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter. Its searchlight found them, starkly illuminating them against the black ocean.

"I just believed in God and I told him, 'God, you are not going to let us die,'" Tejada, 33, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Thursday from a hospital in the northern province of Puerto Plata.

The 52-foot Abra Cadabra, carrying at least 34 people, had been traveling to a fishing bank in rough seas when it sank off northern Dominican Republic in the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday.

By Thursday afternoon, rescue crews plucked 19 people from the water. The U.S. Coast Guard was still searching for the others, said Lt. Cmdr. Chris O'Neil, a Coast Guard spokesman in Miami. No bodies have been found.

Some could have been trapped inside the sinking ship, Tejada said. He said there was panic after a 10-feet wave slammed into the vessel.

"We're going to tip over! We're going to tip over!" he recalled someone shouting.

Tejada said the Coast Guard helicopter lowered a ladder, but he had to be lifted on a stretcher because the skin on his arms and torso was blistered from fuel from the boat's leaking tank.

Haitian migrants claim boat rammed by naval ship
May 8, 2007

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Haitian migrants claim a Turks and Caicos naval vessel rammed their crowded sailboat twice before it capsized last week, killing dozens of people, the director-general of Haiti's National Migration Office said Tuesday.

Jeanne Bernard Pierre, the director-general of Haiti's National Migration Office, said the migrants' account hasn't been confirmed but that the Haitian government would consider it "criminal" if found true.

The death toll rose to 61 Tuesday from Friday's pre-dawn capsizing of the migrant-laden sailboat off the British Caribbean territory of Turks and Caicos, after more bodies were found drifting in the Atlantic Ocean, the Turks and Caicos government said Tuesday.

The migrants' bodies were spotted by a police boat and fishermen in shark-filled waters near where their overloaded sloop overturned, Turks and Caicos Gov. Richard Tauwhare told a news conference.

"We are making every effort we can to identify the bodies," Tauwhare said, adding that two U.S. pathologists were conducting autopsies on the badly decomposed remains.

More than a dozen other Haitian migrants were missing and presumed dead. Officials estimate about 160 people were on board.

Tauwhare said that the vessel overturned while it was being towed to shore by a Turks and Caicos police boat during a storm. The government had previously said authorities arrived on the scene only after it sank

Seventy-eight survivors -- 69 men and nine women -- were being housed in a detention center until they can be flown back to Haiti.

Every year, hundreds of Haitians set off in rickety boats, fleeing economic and civil disorder in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation in hopes of finding a better life by sneaking into the United States or other Caribbean islands.

Haitian immigrants demand justice in boat disaster off Turks and Caicos
12 May 2007

SOUTH DOCK, Turks and Caicos Islands (AP) - Haitian immigrants were simmering with anger Friday over allegations that a Turks and Caicos patrol boat may have caused a packed vessel to capsize last week, killing at least 61 of their countrymen.

The Turks and Caicos Islands government has opened an investigation into the May 4 disaster, the worst to hit Haitian migrants in years. Survivors said the coast guard crew rammed their rickety sailboat as it approached the shore, then towed it into shark-filled waters, causing it to capsize, and abandoned them.

"This is our blood. We will demand justice if what the migrants say is true," said Line Francois, pastor of All Saints Evangelical Assembly, a Haitian Protestant church on the territory's main island. "But when you're a foreigner living in another country, your voice is not that strong."

The Turks and Caicos government said in a statement Friday that a police boat was towing the migrants toward shore and immediately offered help when their boat overturned, disputing migrants' account that they were being led away from land and that police initially refused to rescue them.

Haitian immigrants form an essential low-income work force here, laboring to build luxurious beachfront homes, collect trash and carry suitcases for tourists. Many say allegations in the capsizing underscored their belief that they get treated like second-class citizens compared to locals, known in the Turks and Caicos as "belongers."

Many Haitians arrive here illegally by boat, paying about US$400 (euro300) for the two-day journey across 125 miles (200 kilometers) of ocean. Several interviewed by The Associated Press recounted stories of illegal Haitian immigrants being robbed, beaten and deported by immigration agents before they could lodge a complaint.

"Dogs get treated better than Haitians here," spat a 33-year-old Haitian hotel worker, who declined to give his name for fear of retribution. He called what happened to the migrants last week a "crime" but doubted it would ever be resolved.

"Haitians don't get justice in this place," he said.

But some said their home country, not the Turks and Caicos, is to blame.

"The Haitian government didn't do its work and create jobs," said Rudy Delancy, a taxi driver who has lived here for more than 10 years. "That's why people risk their lives and get on the boats."

Haiti's government ordered flags lowered to half-mast for an official period of mourning for the lost migrants, and the Interior Ministry promised to crack down on human traffickers even though the country's coast guard has only a handful of working boats.

In 1998, Turks and Caicos Islands police allegedly opened fire on a boat packed with more than 100 Haitian migrants, touching off a capsizing that led to the drowning of dozens. Officials said the police fired warning shots and none hit the migrants or the boat.

Earlier this year, roughly 50 Haitian migrants died after a fuel tank exploded on their homemade boat as the migrants were traveling from the northern Haitian town of Cap-Haitien to the Turks and Caicos Islands. Two of the passengers were rescued by an American couple sailing from Panama to Antigua.

Haitians have been coming to the Turks and Caicos for years, fleeing the violence and social turmoil of the Western Hemisphere's poorest country for jobs as construction workers, janitors, landscapers and bellhops in the wealthy territory of 33,000.

In contrast to the divers and yachters who stay in luxury hotels along white-sand beaches, the Haitians mostly live in ramshackle communities. Still, the conditions are far superior to life back home.

Many are proud of having been part of a work force that converted the Turks and Caicos from a mosquito-infested backwater to a popular resort.

"Haitians built this place," said Ronald Gardiner, a Haitian-born businessman who used to host a Creole-language radio program in the Turks and Caicos. "When I came here 22 years ago, there was no fresh water, no electricity and mosquitoes were the king of the island. Now look at it."

300 African migrants land in Canary Islands in 24 hrs

MADRID, May 12, 2007 (AFP) - A new boat-load of illegal would-be African immigrants landed Saturday on the Spanish Canary Islands, bringing the number of arrivals to more than 300 in 24 hours, local authorities said.

Some 101 people from sub-Saharan Africa were aboard the latest vessel which arrived early Saturday on the island of Gran Canaria, a local authority representative said.

"All these people are apparently in good health," the official said.

About a dozen boats carrying more than 200 people had arrived early Friday.

More than 31,000 illegal immigrants reached the Canary Islands, seen as an outpost for entry into the European Union, from West Africa last year, six times more than in 2005. Many others died on the journey.

But tighter maritime surveillance and bad weather conditions have led to a sharp drop in arrivals in the archipelago this year. Only 2,166 migrants reached the Canary Islands in the first four months of this year, compared to 4,606 for the same period in 2006.

However, arrivals have intensified in the last two weeks.

Tunisian coastguard rescues 35 Africans heading for Italy

TUNIS, May 14, 2007 (AFP) - Tunisian coastguard have rescued 35 African would-be immigrants who were trying to sail to Italy from the Libyan coast, port officials said Monday.

The group, which included one woman, was towed back to the southern port of Sfax last Friday. The coastguard was alerted by Tunisian fishermen.

One local newspaper, Assabeh Al-ousboui, reported that the group had been trying to get to the Italian island of Lampedusa, which is located between the Tunisian coast and the island of Malta.

At the time they were found they had been lost for several days and had used up their food and water.

The Tunisian and Libyan coastline often serves as a point of departure for would-be immigrants to Europe, who either head for the Italian or Spanish islands.

Tunisia has sent the people smugglers who run these operations to jail and deported the would-be immigrants.

More than 1,000 people have landed on Spanish or Italian territory since last Thursday. On Monday, boats carrying nearly 350 Africans landed on the Canary Islands.

Officials say the arrival of warm weather and calm seas, which reduce the risks of the sea crossing, is behind the sudden rise in the number of boats trying to reach Spain from Africa.

Survivor of boat carrying illegal migrants rescued off Malta

VALETTA, May 18, 2007 (AFP) - Fishermen rescued a man from the waters off Malta Friday, apparently the sole survivor of a boat carrying what may have been as many as 30 would-be immigrants, a news agency said.

The survivor told the crew of the trawler "Laura 2" that the boat in which he had been travelling had sunk overnight Thursday, but could not say how many other people had been on board, a Maltese army spokesman told AFP.

According to Ansa news agency, the survivor said there had been about 30 passengers on board the boat, which left from the Libyan coast.

A search plane and two boats were dispatched to the site where the vessel is believed to have sunk.

Malta, a tiny European Union country with 400,000 residents, saw the arrival of 1,780 immigrants in 2006 and has regularly asked the EU for help in dealing with the influx.

Many illegal immigrants have died while attempting to make the perilous journey, often from Africa, in dilapidated vessels.

Seach ongoing for 53 migrants adrift off Malta: ANSA

ROME, May 21, 2007 (AFP) - The Maltese army was still searching as the sun set Monday for a small boat packed with 53 people that was adrift south of the Mediterranean island after its engine failed, the ANSA news agency reported.

The passengers had raised the alarm by calling Maltese authorities on a cell phone saying their fibreglass boat was taking on water, the Italian news agency said.

A reconnaissance plane spotted the boat some 150 kilometers (100 miles) south of Malta.

Pictures released to the media showed the huddled migrants, some wearing life vests.

One man is seen waving a red cloth to attract the pilot's attention, while another is bailing out water using a jerrycan.

An army spokesman told AFP in the late afternoon that a patrol boat had been sent to the area to rescue the migrants.

The search was continuing Monday evening, ANSA reported.

Meanwhile the army patrol boat spotted another boat with about 20 would-be immigrants, ANSA said.

Last Friday, a 23-year-old man who was plucked from the sea by fishermen said he was the sole survivor of a shipwreck off Malta.

He said 28 other people from north Africa perished in the accident.

Waves of illegal immigrants intercepted in Malta

VALLETTA, May 23, 2007 (AFP) - An Italian tugboat has intercepted 26 illegal immigrants off Malta's coast and they were due to arrive in the capital Valetta late Wednesday, taking the number of such arrivals since January to 160.

Sources told AFP that the "Citta d'Augusta" picked up 26 immigrants, including one woman, 25 nautical miles south of the Mediterranean island.

The Armed Forces of Malta sent a patrol boat and picked up the immigrants. They are expected to arrive at Valetta harbour on Wednesday night.

This is the sixth group of clandestine immigrants apprehended in Malta and the third to arrive in the island in the last 24 hours.

The police on Wednesday said a boat ferrying illegal immigrants was reported at the tourist bay of Birzebbuga. Twenty-one men, two women and a girl were found on the vessel on Tuesday night.

Another group of 29 men entered the same bay and were sighted by security forces.

Meanwhile, the Italian office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) expressed grave concern for the fate of 53 missing persons aboard a boat last sighted on Monday off Malta's coast.

The office appealed to "the governments of the region to increase and coordinate their efforts to find the boat and give assistance to those on board.

Malta has suspended rescue efforts because no contact had been made with the boat.

Malta, about 200 kilometres (125 miles) north of the Libyan coast receives hundreds of illegal immigrants, mainly from Africa, as they head for the Italian coast and European Union states.

Italian ship pulls bodies of 11 migrants from sea, 3 more missing
18 June 2007

ROME (AP) - An Italian navy ship pulled the bodies of 11 would-be immigrants from the Mediterranean while rescue vessels continued to search Monday for the remains of three others still missing, officials said.

A search and rescue aircraft on Sunday spotted 14 bodies of what coast guard officials said were migrants who were trying to cross the sea from north Africa in search of new lives in Europe.

The patrol boat "Spica" was heading for the southern Sicilian coast town of Porto Empedocle, where the 11 bodies so far located will be turned over to investigators, said the coast guard in Palermo, Sicily.

The bodies were found 60 miles (100 kilometers) southeast of Lampedusa, a tiny Italian fishing island that is closer to Africa than mainland Italy. It was not yet known how long the immigrants had been at sea or how they died in what is the latest in a string of incidents involving migrants crossing the Mediterranean.

In May, 27 migrants were left clinging to a tuna net for three days off Malta's coast after being denied access to a Maltese fishing boat. Earlier this month, a French naval frigate found the bodies of 18 people believed to be migrants off the coast of Malta.

The incidents prompted angry statements from European Union officials, and added urgency to efforts to launch new monitoring and patrol missions by the EU's external borders agency, Frontex.

Thousands of migrants try to reach Italy's coasts every year, brought in by smugglers who make lucrative runs on often fragile and overcrowded boats. The crossings usually increase during the summer thanks to good weather and calm seas.

If the migrants do not have the necessary documents and a job awaiting them in Italy, they are issued with deportation papers, but authorities say many never leave and instead make their way up the peninsula to find work or family in continental Europe.

226 African migrants caught entering Spain's Canary Islands
19 June 2007

MADRID, Spain (AP) - Spanish authorities caught more than 200 African migrants trying to enter the Canary Islands on three boats, the Red Cross said Tuesday.

One hundred migrants arrived Monday night on the island of Tenerife, and another 94 were picked up after arriving Tuesday morning on Gran Canaria, the Red Cross said. Of the latter, five were treated for hypothermia, the newspaper El Mundo reported.

One minor was aboard a boat carrying 32 people that arrived at Lanzarote, another of the islands in the Spanish archipelago off west Africa.

The Red Cross said the number of migrants arriving on the Canary Islands has increased in recent weeks.

Last year, more than 30,000 immigrants seeking a better life in Europe were intercepted while sailing to the Canaries in crowded boats.

Normally, migrants who arrive on the Canary Islands without papers are detained for 40 days and eventually released without work permits or residency papers if the Spanish authorities are unable to identify them. Migrants who can be identified are deported to their countries of origin.

More than 20 migrants missing off Malta
22 June 2007

VALLETTA, Malta (AP) - More than 20 migrants were missing off the coast of Malta, authorities said Friday, citing a man rescued at sea.

The rescued migrant was picked up by an Italian-registered fishing boat on Thursday night about 74 miles (119 kilometers) south of Malta, military officials said.

He told authorities he had been traveling in a boat with 23 other migrants, they said. The fishing boat searched the area, but located neither the other migrants nor the migrant boat, Maltese authorities said, without giving details about what might have happened to the migrant boat.

Separately, a group of 28 migrants, including seven women and three children, were picked up and brought ashore on the Mediterranean island Friday morning.

Boats crammed with clandestine migrants set sail nearly nightly from Libya, with many of them trying to reach Italy and land undetected, authorities say. The trips, often aboard rickety vessels, are organized by smugglers who sometimes abandon the passenger boats at sea while they take off in motorized dinghies, according to investigations.

INTERVIEW-Spanish hotel chains eye Africa amid migrant crisis

DAKAR, June 25 (Reuters) - Spain's major hotel chains are checking out investment opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa as their government seeks to involve private business in its plan to curb illegal migration from the world's poorest continent.

"There is a clear concern on the part of the Spanish authorities to encourage a development of this type and we'd obviously be interested if the right framework existed," said Miguel Barcelo, director-general of expansion in Europe for the Barcelo Group, which has hotels in Morocco and Tunisia.

"If we don't do it, our competitors will," he said in an interview at the weekend.

Executives from Barcelo Hotels and Resorts and the Sol Melia chain were among a 30-strong delegation of Spanish business leaders who accompanied two ministers in a visit to Senegal at the weekend. It was the biggest Spanish delegation of its kind ever to visit the former French colony in West Africa.

Madrid is urging Spanish companies to contract legal workers in Senegal and other West African countries and to consider making job-creating investments there to help staunch a flood of African illegal migrants heading for Europe -- 35,000 last year came ashore in the Spanish Canary Islands in rickety open boats.

Spain's Labour Minister Jesus Caldera told the executives they would find "fertile ground" for investment in Senegal as Madrid and Dakar moved to turn the migrant crisis into an opportunity for strengthened economic and political ties.

"This would be our first experience in sub-Saharan Africa," Barcelo said.

He added that while many Spanish hotel chains like Barcelo had concentrated their overseas investments in Latin America and the Caribbean, which had cultural and language affinities with Spain, there was a search for new destinations in a globalised market.

"We think the Spanish product is tremendously competitive," he said.

AFRICA NEEDS PROMOTING

In largely Muslim Senegal, leading European hotelier Accor has a prominent presence and other hotels are being constructed with capital from the Middle East and the Gulf States, many of them flush with oil cash.

Barcelo said while Africa was not an immediate priority, if his group did choose to invest in Senegal, it would look at the possibility of building or running urban hotels with four stars or more in the capital Dakar, and at the idea of a beachfront establishment on the Atlantic Coast.

But while he saw good prospects for contracting Senegalese workers for the group in Spain, Barcelo said Senegal would need to demonstrate to potential investors that it could match the Caribbean in terms of return on investment.

"The problem is that I can't come to Senegal if it costs me more to build a hotel here than in the Caribbean," he said, adding Dominican Republic, Mexico and Cuba were the "stars" of the Barcelo hotel business, and they still offered more growth.

Nevertheless, the Spanish chain was also looking at opportunities in the Cape Verde archipelago -- a former Portuguese African colony west of Senegal which is experiencing something of a real estate and tourism boom.

Barcelo said sub-Saharan Africa needed to be more widely sold as a tourist destination in the Spanish-speaking market, where the region still had a reputation for insecurity.

"Cultural adaptation is very important ... the (African) desination still does not have the same attractiveness and call of the Caribbean ... it's going to need promotion," he said.

5 Migrants Die Trying to Reach Europe
19 July 2007

ROME (AP) - Two boats carrying would-be migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe sank Wednesday between Italy and Libya, leaving five people dead, including a child, Italian officials said. Eleven others were missing and presumed dead.

One of the boats sank some 40 miles south of Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island closer to north Africa than Sicily, coast guard officials in Palermo said.

An Italian Navy ship pulled 22 survivors from the water as well as the bodies of four migrants, including the child.

Earlier, another group of migrants that had left from north Africa was shipwrecked about 190 miles south of Lampedusa in an area assigned to Libyan authorities for search and rescue operations, coast guard headquarters in Rome said.

The Italian fishing boat Monastir took aboard 14 survivors and one body, and was heading to Lampedusa. The migrants said 11 more people had been aboard the sunken boat. The Monastir and other Italian fishing boats in the area searched for more survivors early Wednesday but found none, officials said.

In a third incident, a group of migrants traveling on a rickety boat hijacked a Tunisian fishing boat, and forced the crew to steer toward Lampedusa, according to the coast guard in Palermo, Sicily. A patrol ship was dispatched to intercept the boat, it said.

Thousands of migrants try to reach Italy's coasts every year, brought in by smugglers who make lucrative runs on often fragile and overcrowded boats.

If the migrants do not have the necessary documents and a job awaiting them in Italy, they are ordered to be deported, but authorities say many never leave and instead make their way up the peninsula to find work or family in continental Europe.

The crossings usually increase during the summer, due to good weather and calmer seas, but the voyage remains perilous, often deadly. In June, a French naval frigate found the bodies of 18 people believed to be migrants off the coast of Malta.

British report criticizes Turks and Caicos in deadly Haitian capsizing
1 August 2007

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - British investigators found no evidence to support claims that Turks and Caicos authorities rammed a boat of Haitian migrants in May, but said police were ill-equipped to handle the capsizing that killed at least 61 people, according to a report released Wednesday.

Britain's Marine Accident Investigation Branch said instability caused by overcrowding most likely caused the boat to overturn in shark-filled waters just off the shore of Providenciales, one of the Turks and Caicos Islands, before dawn on May 4.

The report released by Haiti's ambassador to the Bahamas said the marine police were "ill-equipped" for the rescue operation and "suffered from poor communications, lack of central coordination, and slow mobilization of resources."

The Haitian sailboat was nearing the British Caribbean territory when a police vessel intercepted it and tried to tow it to shore -- even though it was overloaded with at least 150 migrants, the report said.

"It would appear that the sloop capsized while under tow," it said. "The trigger for the capsize cannot be stated with certainty, but the underlying problem of the inherent lack of stability ... was almost certainly the main causal factor in this tragic accident."

Survivors claimed police boat rammed them twice, capsizing their vessel and pitching passengers into the ocean.

But the report disputed that, saying the two boats "bumped" as police pulled up, causing a loud noise that alarmed migrants but did not tip their boat. "Close inspection of both vessels revealed no signs of collision damage," it said.

The Turks and Caicos government released a brief statement saying the authorities would review marine police procedures but offered no detailed response to the report.

British investigators also said the instability of overcrowded migrant boats was "well known" to marine police but found that "no instructions or operating procedures for mitigating the risk of capsize" had been given to police crew.

They suggested that escorting the boat to shore or removing the passengers from their boat would have been better options than towing under the circumstances.

The report recommended that the territory's police immediately cease all actions that would lead to a boat's capsize and establish procedures for safely interdicting migrant boats.

Haitians have made the dangerous voyage of about 200 miles to the Turks and Caicos for years, fleeing the violence and social turmoil of the Western Hemisphere's poorest country for jobs in the wealthy territory of 33,000.

Cruise ship rescues 27 boat people near Malta

MADRID, Aug 10, 2007 (AFP) - A cruise ship on Friday plucked 27 boat people from the Mediterranean Sea some 60 nautical miles south of Malta, the Spanish charter company Vision Cruises said.

The would-be immigrants, only some of whom had life vests, were treated on board the Jules Verne and were headed towards Malta where they were expected in the early evening, a company spokesman told AFP in Madrid.

Earlier in the day the Jules Verne, with some 500 holidaymakers on board, spotted another boat in the same area with some 200 people aboard and cared for them until a maritime rescue team arrived.

Vision Cruises said the 27 rescued boat people had probably been on a different boat that sank.

The Maltese army said earlier that the Jules Verne had rescued 13 people, of whom one was airlifted to hospital with hypothermia, while 10 were feared missing in rough seas.

Also Friday the army rescued another 28 people including three women and brought them ashore.

Malta, the smallest member of the European Union, lies in the centre of the Mediterranean and is among the first ports of entry for migrants hoping to sneak into Europe.

Italian coast guard intercepts 263 illegal immigrants off Lampedusa

ROME, Aug 12, 2007 (AFP) - Italian coast guard vessels intercepted a fishing boat carrying 263 illegal immigrants off the small Italian island of Lampedusa, media reports said Sunday.

Lampedusa coast guard officers spotted the boat in their territory overnight Saturday and escorted it to land, according to reports from the Italian news agency Ansa and television.

The boat's occupants, from Eritrea and other countries in the Horn of Africa, were taken to a holding centre.

The boat had been spotted off Malta on Friday by a French cruise ship.

Maltese authorities, alerted by the cruise ship, delivered water, supplies and life vests to the immigrants, but did not intercept them, saying they did not ask for assistance and wanted to continue toward Italy.

The Italian Coast guard officials also found an illegal immigrant's body in the water while escorting the boat but said they did not think it had come from the boat.

Italy's southernmost island of Lampedusa is a frequent landing point for would-be immigrants from Africa seeking to make a new life in Europe.

In June alone, 77 people died and 133 disappeared in the Strait of Sicily while attempting to make the treacherous crossing, according to figures from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office.

Greek coastguard detains scores of migrants

ATHENS, Aug 12, 2007 (AFP) - The Greek coastguard detained over 160 clandestine immigrants in separate operations in the Aegean Sea over the weekend, the merchant marine ministry said on Sunday.

The immigrants, claiming to be Afghan or Palestinian, were found on boats in the Agean Sea or on the Agean islands of Lesbos, Leros, Chios and Samos.

A 33-year-old man suspected to be a trafficker was arrested with them.

The Greek islands in the Aegean are used as landing points for would-be immigrants on the human-smuggling route from Asia to Europe.

Thousands are detained every year after risking their lives to cross from Turkey aboard rickety vessels, many of which sink en route.

Only a small minority are given asylum in Greece. The majority are temporarily detained before being released with orders to leave the country.

Italy-bound Egyptians rescued in Mediterranean

CAIRO, Aug 15, 2007 (AFP) - The Egyptian navy has picked up 91 would-be illegal immigrants headed from Egypt to Italy after their boat broke down on the high seas, the local press reported on Wednesday.

The hungry and thirsty men were rescued off the coast of Cyprus on Tuesday having drifted for four days and were returned to Egypt by the navy after the owner of the fishing boat they were travelling in sent out an SOS.

Italy faces a constant influx of mostly north African immigrants who risk their lives trying to reach Europe, often in small boats.

Italian coastguards said earlier this week they had picked up 7,010 illegal immigrants alive from the sea since the start of the year.

Waves of illegal immigrants wash ashore on French Indian Ocean Island of Mayotte
15 August 2007

SAINT-DENIS DE LA REUNION, Reunion (AP) - Nearly every day, boatloads of poor migrants land on the Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, hoping for a better life. But sometimes death awaits instead, as was the case earlier this week when 17 people were killed when their motorboat sank off the island's coast.

The wreck focused attention on illegal immigration to the French enclave, where estimates suggest that nearly a third of the 200,000 inhabitants do not have residency papers.

The vast majority of those living illegally in Mayotte come from the neighboring Comoros Islands, an impoverished archipelago nestled between the Africa and the northern tip of Madagascar.

France ruled the archipelago until the Comoros gained independence in 1975. Rocked since by coups and political turmoil, Comoros is one of the world's poorest countries, with a young and rapidly growing population of about 770,000.

Mayotte, on the eastern edge of the archipelago, chose to remain French and is now seen as an attractive destination for Comorans fleeing poverty and despair.

With just 70 kilometers (44 miles) separating Mayotte from the Comoran island of Anjouan, a boat ride to the French island normally takes just a few hours. The journey, on motorized wooden boats known as "kwassa-kwassas," costs about euro150-euro200 (US$204-$272).

But too often the trip ends in tragedy, local activists say.

"Each time, the passengers risk death," said Kamel Adjemout of the pro-immigrant organization Education Without Borders.

On Monday, a boat carrying about 38 people overturned in choppy seas while trying to evade the French coast guard, killing 17, including eight children. Seventeen others have not been accounted for.

This week's wreck brought to 32 the number of migrants who have died while making the crossing since March 2005, officials from Mayotte's prefecture said.

Local activists say that number does not take into account deaths that took place far from Mayotte's coasts and the real toll could be much higher.

Last year, France expelled nearly 14,000 illegal immigrants from Mayotte, the local prefecture said. And with the fight against illegal immigration a top priority of newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy, many expect expulsion efforts on the island to be stepped up.

But activists warn an increase in expulsions could result in more dangerous crossings as people try to come back to Mayotte again.

Many of those who brave the journey "are people who were expelled though their lives are established in Mayotte," said activist Melanie Portmann. "They're just coming home."

------

Associated Press writers Laurent Pirot and Pierre-Yves Roger in Paris, France, contributed to this report.

More than 80 illegal migrants intercepted off Sicily

ROME, Aug 18, 2007 (AFP) - Italian authorities Saturday intercepted two boats carrying more than 80 would-be immigrants in the waters near the Mediterranean island of Sicily, the ANSA news agency reported.

The first boat with 37 men on board was found southeast off the southeast coast of Sicily, near Raguse.

The second boat with more than 40 people on board, including three women, was located near the Italian island of Lampedusa, which is south of Sicily.

The nationalities of the migrants were not disclosed, although they mostly come from the north African coast which is near the Italian islands, seen as a entry point to the European Union.

On Friday, more than 220 illegal migrants travelling in five boats landed in Lampedusa. There was also another tragic crossing as at least 14 people drowned at sea when their boat sank.

In all, some 800 would-be immigrants have been intercepted or rescued in the past week in the waters off Lampedusa.

All of the migrants after being identified will be sent to shelters on the islands where they will remain until the authorities decide whether to grant them asylum or to return them to their home countries.

According to official figures, 8,260 would-be immigrants reached the Italian shores in the first seven months of this year, which is a 30 percent drop from the number of illegal immigrants in 2006.

125 African migrants intercepted off Canaries

MADRID, Aug 23, 2007 (AFP) - Spanish rescue services said they intercepted 125 African migrants in a dilapidated boat off Spain's Canary Islands on Thursday, bringing the total to 300 in less than 24 hours.

The discovery came as Spanish officials said an EU-coordinated surveillance unit operating off the west African coast had intercepted 5,056 others in the first half of the year preparing to make the same hazardous trip which cost 13 people their lives earlier this week.

Survivors of one group said they had thrown 11 migrants who died during the voyage overboard while another was found dead on arrival in port Sunday and a 13th died later in hospital.

Twenty-eight survivors were rescued by the fishing vessel southeast of Fuerteventura, one of the seven islands which make up the archipelago off the coast of Morocco.

By the end of June 6,306 immigrants had made it to the islands or to mainland Spain this year, a figure 55 percent down on the same period in 2006.

Last year saw overall arrivals total some 31,200, three times the previous annual record but this year the volume has dropped with the EU's border surveillance unit Frontex stepping up operations.

Since Spain and Morocco increased patrols last year to deter immigrants seeking to cross the Strait of Gibraltar almost all of the mainly sub-Saharan African migrants have made for the Canaries instead.

However, last week saw 60 caught trying to reach the south-eastern mainland coast off the city of Murcia, a route previously ignored by illegal border-crossers.

New migrant influx off Spain's Canaries

MADRID, Aug 24, 2007 (AFP) - A Spanish rescue boat delivered 53 African migrants to Spain's Canary Islands after intercepting them offshore Saturday, bringing the total arrivals in three days to 363, officials said.

They warned that hundreds more were also on their way.

An AFP photographer on Tenerife reported the group was brought ashore at Los Cristianos on the south side of Tenerife and said authorities had indicated that two further fishing vessels, with a total of 240 people aboard, were likely to reach nearby El Hierro island on Sunday morning.

Arrivals of undocumented African migrants to the Canaries have nonetheless significantly dropped compared with an influx of more than 31,200 recorded in 2006, three times more than the previous annual record.

250 migrants land on Spain's Canary Islands

TENERIFE, Spain, Aug 27, 2007 (AFP) - Some 250 illegal immigrants arrived on Spain's Canary Islands overnight on three wooden boats, maritime rescue officials said Monday.

A cayuco, or wooden fishing boat, carrying about 100 migrants arrived on Sunday night on Tenerife, the largest of the seven islands that make up the archipelago off the coast of Morocco.

Another boat with 19 people onboard, including a woman and three minors, arrived on the island of Lanzarote in the early hours of Monday.

A maritime rescue ship meanwhile pulled 130 other migrants from a boat off the coast of El Hierro, the archipelago's smallest island, and brought them to Los Cristianos on the south side of Tenerife, early on Monday.

About one dozen minors were traveling with this group. All were in good health.

On Saturday another 53 migrants arrived on the Canary Islands, which has become a main entry point for Africans seeking a better life in Europe.

Last year saw overall arrivals total some 31,200, three times the previous annual record but this year the volume has dropped with the European Union's border surveillance unit stepping up operations.

Over 6,500 migrants have arrived on the archiepalgo since the beginning of the year, including more than 1,000 who have arrived in August, according to a representative of the Spanish government on the islands.

26 clandestine Tunisian migrants to Europe rescued

TUNIS, Sept 4, 2007 (AFP) - A spurt in good weather has seen the number of Tunisians trying to sneak into southern Europe climb and 26 clandestine immigrants were rescued from an overloaded vessel, a daily said Tuesday.

The rescued passengers were found in critical condition 110 km (68 miles) off the Tunisian coast on a packed fishing boat, the Echorouq newspaper said.

They were taken to a local hospital, it said, without specifying when the incident occurred.

Placed under custody, the would-be immigrants told police they had each paid between 500 and 1,200 euros (980 to 1,600 dollars) to travel to the Italian coast.

Eight others were picked up on Saturday in the same area and in a similar operation, while 47 Tunisians were also rescued last week while heading for Italy's southernmost island of Lampedusa.

At least 56 boat people die while crossing Gulf of Aden: UNHCR
14 September 2007

GENEVA (AP) - At least 56 Africans have died in recent days trying to make the perilous journey across the Gulf of Aden into Yemen, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.

Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said hundreds of Somali, Ethiopian and Sudanese have crammed into boats since the start of September in an attempt to escape to the Arabian peninsula. Most were taken by smugglers.

Those who made it ashore told UNHCR monitors that people had died as the result of beatings, drowning and simple overcrowding of the often rickety vessels that travel between Somalia and Yemen, Redmond said.

"Many of them had been beaten, and some were reportedly doused with acid by the smugglers," he told reporters in Geneva, where UNHCR has its headquarters. "The bodies of those who did not survive the six-day ordeal were reportedly thrown overboard."

In one single journey 24 people died, Redmond said.

He said some 925 people, mostly from Ethiopia and Somalia, have arrived safely in Yemen since Sept. 3. At least 12 boats have arrived in that time.

The passengers told refugee monitors they paid between US$70 and US$150 (euro50 and euro108) for the journey.

The smugglers often force passengers to disembark offshore to avoid Yemeni coast guard patrols.

Redmond said an Ethiopian who survived a recent voyage was injured after arrival.

"Once they reached shore, they came under fire from military forces," Redmond said, adding that UNHCR has raised the issue with Yemeni authorities because it has received three or four reports of this kind.

Yemeni military contingents say they fire at smugglers and not at the passengers, according to Redmond. He said the latest case was still unclear.

At least 282 people have died and 159 have gone missing this year trying to crossing the Gulf of Aden.

Migrants from the Horn of Africa -- particularly from Somalia where ongoing violence between the U.N.-supported interim government and Islamic groups has caused thousands to flee their homes -- regularly face abuse at the hands of smugglers.

Some are attacked during the journey and thrown overboard into shark-infested waters.

The high season for smuggling across the gulf usually runs from early September to May when the sea is less stormy than during summer. Over 10,000 people have reportedly arrived in Yemen by boat this year, the agency said.

UNCHR has 25 officials in the northern Somali Puntland region carrying out an information campaign to warn people of the risks they face at the hands of smugglers, Redmond said.

Thousands of Asians waiting in Guinea to sail to Spain: report

MADRID, Sept 20, 2007 (AFP) - Up to 6,000 Asians have massed in Guinea-Conakry hoping to take a high risk sea trip to Spain, the ABC daily newspaper reported Thursday citing a Spanish intelligence report.

Most of the would-be migrants come from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar spent years working in Gulf states and were taken to the West African country by human traficking networks, the newspaper said.

The migrants usually stopped off in Casablanca in Morocco before heading south to Guinea-Conarky, often using Ethiopian Airlines in their travels, it added.

The deputy director of European Union external border agency Frontex, Gil Arias, was quoted as saying that he was "certain" that the Asians gathered in Guinea-Conarky would "sooner or later" try to reach Europe.

In February some 370 people from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, were rescued from a ship, the Marine I, stranded off Mauritania, which was on its way to Spain's Canary Islands.

In March some 300 people from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were found on a cargo ship called "Happy Day" off the coast of Senegal that was also believed to be headed for Spain.

The Canary Islands have been struggling with a huge influx of African migrants, who for the most part make the dangerous journey on small wooden fishing boats.

More than 31,200 immigrants arrived in the islands last year, more than tripling the previous annual record and overwhelming the island chain authorities, and some 7,000 have made port this year.

The arrival of migrants has declined this year due in part to stepped up patrols of the West African coast, forcing immigrants to look elsewhere.

Five illegal immigrants missing after boat sinks off Turkey

ANKARA, Sept 24, 2007 (AFP) - The Turkish coast guard Monday launched a search for five missing illegal immigrants after a boat ferrying 17 of them sank off Turkey's western coast, the Anatolia news agency reported.

Twelve of the immigrants -- eight Iraqis and four Palestinians -- were rescued off the waters by the coast guard following a tip-off that a boat had sunk near the popular resort of Kusadasi on Turkey's Aegean coast.

They also picked up a Turkish national who was later charged with organizing the clandestine voyage.

The coast guard have so far failed to find any sign of three Palestinians and two Iraqis who went missing, the report said.

Turkey is on a major human-smuggling route from Asia to Europe and illegal immigrants are detained on an almost daily basis.

The immigrants mostly try to cross to Greece by land, or brave sea journeys to Greece or Italy, often aboard unseaworthy vessels.

15 illegal immigrants in container in Barcelona

MADRID, Sept 22, 2007 (AFP) - Fifteen illegal immigrants stowed away in a container in the port of Barcelona gave themselves up by hoisting a makeshift white flag, narrowly avoiding almost certain death, a police spokesman said Saturday.

They waved a white piece of clothing through the roof of their container in a desperate bid to attract the crane operator's attention just as he was about to place another container on top of them, the spokesman said.

As their container was locked on the outside they likely could not have escaped, and would have ended up dying of asphyxiation or dehydration, he said.

The illegal immigrants, who included two women and five minors, were already severely dehydrated and taken to hospital.

The containers were being unloaded off a ship flying the Marshalls Islands flag.

The ship had put in at the French port of Marseille before setting sail for Barcelona, but authorities suspect the immigrants embarked when it took on its cargo in the Turkish port of Izmir. They were believed to be from North Africa or the Middle East.

Greek coastguard arrests 120 alleged migrants

ATHENS, Oct 8, 2007 (AFP) - The Greek coastguard arrested 120 suspected illegal immigrants and seven alleged human traffickers on a boat on Zante island in the Ionian Sea, the merchant marine ministry said Monday.

Iraqis and Bangladeshis were prominent among the mix of nationalities picked up early Monday, a ministry spokeswoman said.

The coast guard arrested the crew of six Egyptians and a Greek. The boat was registered in Egypt, she said.

They were transferred to a local gymnasium on the island where they will be examined by doctors, she added.

Greece is an important stop for illegal immigrants from Asia who aim to reach western Europe.

On Saturday, the Turkish military had accused Greece of dumping illegal immigrants in its waters, a charge Athens denied.

Both sides have claimed that each does not do enough to stem the tide of illegal migration.

Last month, Iranian and Afghan migrants told Turkish police they had been pushed back into Turkish waters by the Greek coastguard, which had also punctured their inflatable boat.

U.N. refugee agency says up to 66 people drown crossing Gulf of Aden
23 October 2007

GENEVA (AP) - Up to 66 Africans drowned while trying to make the perilous journey across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen earlier this week, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday.

The migrants -- mostly Somalis and Ethiopians -- were forced overboard into deep water by smugglers on Sunday after being taken to the coast of Yemen from Somalia in two boats, said Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

"A total of 28 bodies were buried on the beach, while 38 remain missing," he told reporters in Geneva.

Some of the 178 people who managed to swim to the shore told UNHCR that passengers were harshly beaten by the smugglers and several were injured.

"Some reported being robbed by Yemeni military personnel," Redmond said.

More people appear to be dying during the voyage compared with previous years, Redmond said, partly because the boats are extremely overloaded.

"People are not allowed to get up to move, that's how tight it is, and if someone does start trying to move they're beaten," he said, adding that "there have also been rapes and other abuses on board."

At least 439 migrants have died while crossing the gulf this year and another 489 are missing, according to UNHCR.

More than 20,000 people have made the perilous journey across the gulf in smuggling boats this year, the agency said.

Last year, around 26,000 migrants crossed over to Yemen, according to UNHCR.

The high season for smuggling across the gulf usually runs from early September to May when the waters are less stormy than during summer.

The smugglers come mostly from the Somali port of Bossaso and the country's Puntland region, Redmond said.

"We've been working along with other agencies to try to get local authorities in Somalia to stop this practice but that's next to impossible," he added.

"Some of the people wanting to make this journey ... have been convinced to go back, particularly those who are looking for a better economic life," he said. "But many of these people have nothing left to lose."

UNHCR, which hands out food and water to migrants landing in Yemen before taking them to a refugee center, will open two additional offices along the Yemeni coast next year, Redmond said.

Reports: 15 Migrants Die Off Italy Coast
28 October 2007

ROME (AP) - At least 15 migrants drowned in the waters off the Italian coast in two separate incidents, including the disintegration of a boat that spilled more than 100 passengers into rough seas, reports said Sunday.

More than 120 people were on board a boat that ran aground about 200 yards off the Calabrian coast, the "toe" of boot-shaped Italy, near Roccella Jonica, the ANSA and Apcom news agencies reported. At least seven people died, and the death toll was expected to rise.

The boat broke into at least five hulking pieces of splintered wood and metal that washed up on shore.

Separately, off Sicily's eastern coast, the bodies of eight migrants were pulled from the water Sunday, port officials in Catania said. Seven survivors were found on shore and two were considered missing, officials said.

Illegal migrants routinely are ferried in overcrowded boats by smugglers making the lucrative run between North Africa or Turkey and Italy's southern coast.

If the migrants do not have the necessary documents and a job awaiting them in Italy, they are ordered deported, but authorities say many never leave and instead make their way up the peninsula to find work or family in continental Europe.

Nearly 300 illegal migrants intercepted off Italian coast

ROME, Oct 30, 2007 (AFP) - Nearly 300 clandestine migrants were intercepted Tuesday off the Italian coast, officials said, bringing the number of people seeking to illegally enter Europe via Italy to nearly 500 since the weekend.

One boatload of would-be immigrants, who indicated they were from Eritrea, consisted of 194 men, 61 women and children who were taken by authorities to reception center in Sicily, coast guard officials said.

In Calabria in southern Italy, some 30 other illegal migrants, all Palestinian men, came on shore in two inflatable boats and were arrested.

The latest arrivals followed a tragic weekend when 17 people died and eight were reported missing after two boats carrying illegal migrants sank off Sicily. Another seven died and some 30 people disappeared in Calabria.

On Monday, two more boats with 114 illegal migrants were also intercepted off the Sicilian coast.

Deathtoll rises to 46 from African illegal emigrants sea ordeal

NOUAKCHOTT, Nov 7, 2007 (AFP) - One more illegal African emigrant died Wednesday in Mauritania taking to 46 the victims of a three-week sea ordeal survived by nearly 100 others, a Red Cross official said Wednesday.

Mohamed Ould Hamada told AFP from the northern city of Nouadhibou that the latest victim had initially shown no signs of weakness and exhaustion, but had died late Tuesday night probably from drinking too much sea water in the last days before being rescued.

Scores of emigrants exhausted and traumatised after 20 days on the Atlantic Ocean in an open fishing boat drifted onto the shores between Mauritania and Morocco on Monday after the boat's engine packed up a week ago.

They had set sail from the beaches of Senegal's southern Casamance province on October 16 heading to the Spanish islands of the Canaries but ran aground during the perilous journey.

After a lull of several months, recent days have seen an upsurge of departures despite the stepped-up maritime patrols off Africa's Atlantic coast by the European Union border agency Frontex, which cooperates with some west African nations.

The scaled up surveillance of territorial waters has however forced migrants to seek alternative, but now longer and even more hazardous routes.

"We are battling against the departures, but there is real stubbornness ... to evade the controls," said Senegalese police spokesman Alioune Ndiaye.

"They are forced to take onto open and high seas, where the risks are doubled," he said.

An unknown number of migrants die every year trying to reach the Canaries. In July, 50 perished after their boat capsized near the island of Tenerife.

Located off the coast of Morocco, the Canary Islands have been a magnet in recent years for mainly sub-Saharan immigrants aspiring to reach Europe after a security crackdown in Morocco and two Spanish enclaves there.

More than 31,200 illegal immigrants arrived in the Canaries last year, more than tripling the previous annual record and overwhelming the island chain's authorities.

Cargo ship rescued in Greek waters with 275 illegal immigrants on board

ATHENS, Nov 11, 2007 (AFP) - Greek port authorities were on Sunday towing a cargo ship with about 275 illegal immigrants on board which had earlier sent out a Mayday call in high winds, the merchant navy ministry said on Sunday.

The captain of the Turkish-flagged ship, travelling from Turkey to Italy, sent out a distress signal on Saturday night after a mechanical failure which occurred amid winds of more than 90 kilometres (56 miles) an hour.

The vessel, named Aktag, was about 11 nautical miles from the western coast of the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece at the time, the ministry said.

The ministry did not give an exact figure for the number of suspected illegal immigants on board, saying a full check would be done when the boat docks at Katakolo on the western coast of the Peloponnese.

Fifteen crew members were also on board. Another cargo ship in the area was assisting with the rescue operation, the ministry said.

Twenty feared dead in Gambia migrant boat capsize

BANJUL, Nov 12 (Reuters) - At least twenty illegal African migrants headed for Spain were feared dead after their boat caught fire and capsized off the coast of Gambia at the weekend, a survivor and police in the small West African state said.

It was the third such tragedy in as many weeks involving West Africans trying to reach the Spanish Canary Islands by sea to seek jobs and a better life in Europe.

More than 120 Africans have died or are missing feared dead in the recent incidents, which point to a seasonal pickup in clandestine migrant departures despite Spanish and European Union patrols sharply cutting overall arrivals.

Gambian police said they recovered seven bodies from the capsized boat which a survivor said was carrying 50 passengers when it caught fire and turned over in bad weather late on Saturday two km (about 1 mile) off the Gambian capital Banjul.

"I believe that 30 escaped. I showed the marine officers who came to the scene seven dead bodies. The captain of the vessel is at large. He asked us to pay him 1,000 euros ($1,459) to take us to Spain," survivor Lamin Fatty told Gambian TV.

Police said they believed the blaze on the boat started when fuel containers on board for the long journey to the Canaries ignited, apparently because one of the passengers was smoking.

Last year, more than 30,000 African illegal migrants landed in Spain's Canary Islands after making the long, dangerous journey in rickety open wooden boats that set off from beaches, rivers and mangrove creeks from Mauritania to Guinea.

Hundreds are believed to have drowned and several thousand were repatriated to their countries of origin.

Spanish officials say their sea and air patrols carried out with other EU partners off West Africa have helped to reduce migrants arrivals in the Canaries by as much as two thirds this year. But young Africans lured by a dream of wealth and jobs in Europe were still attempting the risky trip in their hundreds.

"There's no doubt we're seeing a temporary pick-up," a European diplomat who follows migration closely told Reuters.

MISSING RELATIVES

He said the pick-up was the result of the end of the rainy season and improved weather conditions at this time of year between Mauritania's northern Cap Blanc and the Canaries.

In downtown Banjul, hundreds of people gathered outside the Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital searching for missing relatives they believed may have made the ill-fated voyage.

"We are very sad. It's unfortunate that our youths only have in their minds the idea of going to Europe rather than thinking of staying to participate in national development," said Ousman Jobe, who was looking for his nephew. Fearing prosecution, most of the survivors of the capsize had gone into hiding.

Last week, police in Mauritania said at least 47 migrants had died trying to reach the Canaries after drifting for more than two weeks off the west coast of Africa in two boats.

In late October, a Spanish fishing boat found seven corpses and one survivor in an open-topped wooden boat adrift in West African Atlantic waters 21 days after it had set off.

The lone survivor said 56 other passengers drowned, starved or killed themselves in despair after losing their way.

Spain has signed migration cooperation accords with some West African governments. These envisage more jobs for legal migrants, and offer more development aid for projects aimed at keeping young Africans in work at home.

(Additional reporting by Pascal Fletcher in Dakar, Writing by Pascal Fletcher, Editing by Matthew Jones)

32 Cuban migrants swim to shore in Florida, 1 dead after boat apparently capsizes
15 November 2007

PALM BEACH, Florida (AP) - A boat carrying Cuban immigrants apparently capsized offshore Thursday, leaving one dead and 32 others to swim to shore.

A male migrant was found dead in the surf. The others were being held by federal authorities, police said.

Under the so-called wet-foot-dry-foot policy, Cubans intercepted at sea are generally sent back while those who reach U.S. soil are allowed to stay.

"They made it to shore," Palm Beach Capt. Rick Howe said.

He said the group seemed healthy and claimed to have been on the ocean since Nov. 9.

Illicit migration, a boon for Senegalese village

ELINKINE, Senegal, Nov 18, 2007 (AFP) - This sleepy, southern Senegalese coastal village is quietly thriving thanks to illegal emigration, with the boom undeterred by survivors' harrowing tales of death and danger at sea.

Because of the clandestine nature of the business, it is not known how many migrants are processed or how many fishing boats set sail from Elinkine, nestled in the deep mangroves on the mouth of the Casamance River, in Senegal's southern province of the same name.

But what is certain is that it is a key departure point for west African illegal emigrants trying to cross the Atlantic Ocean to the so-called European Eldorado and that a network of smugglers are raking a fortune from the trade.

"Here everybody benefits, that is why people are careful," says Alioune who identifies himself by a pseudonym.

Residents of this tiny, leafy village are very cagey when it comes to talking about the booming trade that has prospered in recent years, from desperately poor Africans who exhaust their family's meagre resources for the risky 1,000-plus kilometre-long (625-plus miles) trip on high seas in ramshackle fishing boats.

When and if they talk, they neither give their full names nor details for fear of upsetting the system.

Boat owners and smugglers are directly involved in the trafficking, as are fishermen enlisted to sail the pirogues.

Along a sandy village street, a ferryman sitting on his veranda who gives his name as Joseph says that he is aware that he is on a police wanted list.

"We can make lots of money, but a lot of smugglers have been arrested," he said before dodging away.

According to Alioune, an average two boats set sail from Elinkine aiming for the Spanish Canary Islands every week, but it is generally not a subject of open discussion because "it is a very dangerous game" that concerns the entire village.

Some homes around the village serve as "lodges" where days before takeoff, the prospective migrants are gathered and prepared for the trip.

"Everybody is well aware and most of the people are involved. It comes with lots of money, it's a mafia here," added Alioune. Boats owners have created what he called a commission that "facilitates" the departures, he said.

Each boat owner contributes an annual fee to this commission of three million CFA francs (4,500 euros, 6,600 dollars) "and in return the departures are facilitated and the police get their share," he said.

According to Alioune, the only four boats to have been caught by police this year in Elinkine were not organised in the village.

Last month a boat with over 100 would-be migrants took off from Casamance headed to the Canaries. The engine broke down and for weeks the group was stranded at sea. One by one they started dying from thirst and exposure.

By the time the boat drifted ashore near Mauritania, more than 40 had perished on board and their bodies tossed overboard by survivors.

Keba Sow, 31, a carpenter who made it to the Canaries last year but was repatriated, recounts harrowing experiences of having to deal with raging storms, sea sickness and suicides.

"I saw one of my friends throw himself into the water. It's not easy," he said adding that four others committed suicide that way during the same 10-day trip.

And if caught in a heavy storm, there is no time to rest, but to deal with the waters gushing into the boat.

"For 10 days we did not sleep, we were scooping out water day and night," he said.

Another survivor Abdoulaye Ndiaye, said they ran into one bad storm that actually cracked the boat, and it was decided to call off the trip and seek help from a passing vessel.

By the time the ordeal was over nine people had died. He said he counted at least 10 others, supposedly thrown overboard by other boats, floating on the water.

Despite the drama of his first attempt, Ndiaye wants to try again.

"I would rather die at sea than stay here unable to fend for my family which looks up to me, and I have nothing to give it. It's horrible," he said.

Last year was record for the canaries with more than 31,200 illegal immigrant arrivals in the Canaries, which lie off northwest Africa, more than tripling the previous annual record and overwhelming the island chain's authorities.

But stepped-up maritime patrols off Africa's Atlantic coast run by the European Union border agency Frontex, which operates alongside some African countries, had seen a lull in departures this year.

To avoid detection the departure points have shifted farther to the south where patrols are still weak, but the move only means the already dangerous trips are longer and more perilous.

Senegalese police spokesman Alioune Ndiaye, says the fight against illegal emigration is now facing "real stubbornness" and daring attempts to evade the controls.

"They are forced to take onto to open and high seas, where the risks are doubled," he said.

64 African migrants drown off Yemen

SANAA, Nov 22, 2007 (AFP) - Sixty-four African migrants, including three children, drowned in the Gulf of Aden while trying to cross from Somalia to Yemen, the official Saba news agency reported on Thursday.

The bodies were recovered from the sea by fishermen and the Yemeni coastguard after the migrants' boat overturned off the southeastern province of Chabwa, the agency said.

It said 25 of the would-be illegal immigrants managed to swim to shore.

The agency, which did not give the nationality of the victims, said a total of 49 bodies were recovered from the spot where the vessel overturned and 15 others were found washed up on the coast.

At the start of November 40 Somalis drowned after being forced overboard by people traffickers in the Gulf of Aden.

They were part of a group of 120 who set out from the Somali port of Bosasso, the economic capital of Puntland, the semi-autonomous region in the north east of the country.

The UNHCR estimates that more than 20,000 people have made the perilous crossing of the Gulf of Aden to Yemen this year, with more than 439 deaths and another 489 people missing.

Many of the migrants who attempt the journey are desperate to flee conflict and persecution in their home regions in Africa.

The UN refugee agency announced on October 23 that up to 66 people drowned after being forced overboard in the same area.

Crossing the Gulf of Aden takes two days at best and is made especially dangerous due to shark-infested waters, strong currents and inhumane conditions on poorly maintained vessels that are open to the elements.

Nearly 300 immigrants detained on Greek islands: ministry

ATHENS, Nov 25, 2007 (AFP) - Coastguards intercepted 294 would-be immigrants on and off several Greek islands over the weekend, all of them from Turkey, the merchant marine ministry said Sunday.

On Saturday police detained 116 illegal immigrants on boats off the islands of Samos, Lesbos and Kos and 11 others on Kos and Lesbos.

On Sunday 107 others were held off Lesbos, Pharmakonissis and Kos. Two smugglers were also arrested.

Police arrested another 60 illegal immigrants Sunday inland on the same three islands, as well as two smugglers.

All came from Turkey which lies close to the islands in the eastern Aegean sea.

Greece is a major transit point for illegal immigrants heading to western Europe.

The ministry said earlier this month that more than 7,000 people had been detained since the start of the year trying to enter the country illegally from Turkey.

During the same period, 145 foreign smugglers were arrested and 125 boats and two cars used to transport migrants seized.

Greece and Turkey are planning to open a hotline between their respective coastguards to improve cooperation in fighting clandestine immigration which is causing tensions between the two neighbours.

Spain proposes EU-Africa pact against illegal immigration

LISBON, Dec 8, 2007 (AFP) - Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero on Saturday called for an EU-Africa pact to combat illegal immigration in Europe, which he termed "the dramatic result of a collective failure."

Zapatero raised the issue on behalf of the European Union at a landmark EU-Africa summit in Lisbon, with Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi acting as the spokesman for the African leaders, Spanish government sources said.

Kadhafi said Europe should return resources "stolen" from Africa during colonisation or risk seeing more illegal immigrants, a source in the conference room said. He also suggested the EU should give the continent "one billion euros" to resolve the problem of immigration.

Africa "is a beggar continent in the eyes of the world," the source quoted him as saying.

Immigration is one of the main issues on the agenda at the two-day summit of 67 African and EU leaders in the Portuguese capital.

"Illegal immigration is the dramatic result of a collective failure" by both Europe and Africa, Zapatero told EU and African leaders at a closed-door session on the first day of the conference.

"It produces people who are subject to organised crime and abuse and without rights in the countries where they live. The only decent policy is the establishment of legal channels of migration," he said.

He noted that "some 10 million African illegals live in Europe," and 812,000 of them live legally in Spain.

The Socialist prime minister proposed "a pact based on three main points -- education, the generation of employment for young people and the development of an infrastructure that energises the social and economic fabric of the countries of origin."

The accord must seek to "avoid brain drain" and encourage people to return to Africa, he said.

In a final declaration to be adopted at the summit, Africa and the EU are to pledge to forge strategies to stem the tide of illegal migration to Europe by promoting and better managing legal migration.

Under the deal, the two sides want to especially facilitate the transfer of money by immigrants back home and help set up centres to better advise Africans on ways to legally emigrate.

A European Union border agency patrolling west African coasts since last year alongside several west African countries, has successfully warded off illegal migrants heading to the Spanish Canary islands, the main entry point into Europe.

After a record 31,000 Africans landed in the Canaries in 2006, the number of arrivals there has dropped by more than 60 percent so far this year.

The hardest hit of the European countries, Spain has in recent months upped its diplomatic initiatives in west Africa. Most illegal immigrants that made port in Spain last year originated from west Africa.

Spanish authorities fear many of the thousands of Africans who make the perilous journey towards Spain die of thirst or exposure on the risky voyages, but there is no way of knowing exactly how many have died.

Death toll in immigrant boat tragedy drops to 43: Turkey's Anatolia

ANKARA, Dec 10, 2007 (AFP) - At least 43 people drowned after a boat believed to be carrying up to 85 migrants sank at the weekend in the Aegean Sea off western Turkey, a local official told Anatolia news agency Monday.

The death toll, announced as 51 earlier, was revised downward to 43 after it emerged that some bodies were counted twice, Orhan Sefik Guldibi, the top administrative official in Seferihisar, near the port city of Izmir, told the agency.

Two women were among the victims.

Only six people, among them two Palestinians, were known to have survived the accident, Guldibi told AFP by telephone, adding that they had been hospitalized with shock.

Speaking in his hospital bed, one survivor told Turkish television that the clandestine journey -- apparently to a nearby Greek island -- was organised by two Turks who did not board the ill-fated boat.

The 15-metre (50-foot) vessel was believed to have capsized late Saturday about two hours after it set off because of poor weather conditions and the fact that it was overloaded with passengers, Guldibi told AFP.

"We still have hope of finding survivors, but every passing hour is working to our disadvantage," he said.

Assisted by helicopters, coast guard and police vessels as well as local fishermen combed the sea, but their efforts were being hampered by strong winds.

Paramilitary troops and police officers were also searching the coastline.

"We believe the ship sank off Seferihisar, far off from the coast, but we have not located any wreckage yet," Guldibi said.

The boat was believed to be heading to the Greek island of Chios, northwest of Seferihisar.

Turkish authorities were alerted to the incident late Sunday when some of the survivors swam ashore and locals reported hearing cries for help coming from the sea.

It was not immediately clear how many people were aboard the vessel.

Guldibi said survivors spoke of the ship carrying 60 to 70 people, while the coast guard command said in a written statement that there were some 85 people on board.

The nationalities of the immigrants were not immediately clear, but Guldibi said they believed the majority were Palestinians, Somalis and Iraqis.

Footage broadcast on the NTV news channel showed at least 15 bodies laid out on the shore in black bags.

Most of the victims had washed up on the shore, the channel added.

Turkey, which is aspiring to join the European Union, has long been a staging post for illegal immigrants from poor Asian and African countries trying to sneak into prosperous Europe.

Illegal immigrants are detained on an almost daily basis as they attempt to try to cross to Greece by land, or brave sea journeys to Greece or Italy, often aboard unseaworthy vessels.

Under pressure from both the European Union and the United Nations to tackle the flow of immigrants passing through its soil, Turkey introduced lengthy jailterms and fines for human traffickers in its overhauled penal code which went into effect in 2005.

It has also pledged to tighten up border controls, improve cooperation between state organs and modernise technical equipment to better combat illegal immigration.

As part of the overhaul, the coast guard has reinforced its fleet, aircraft and personnel to track clandestine immigrants.

UN: 200 or More Refugees May Be Drowned
14 December 2007

GENEVA (AP) - More than 200 migrants are feared to have drowned at sea in separate incidents off Yemen, Turkey and the Canary Islands so far this month, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.

The death toll from a single incident off the Turkish coast on Saturday could rise to 86, said Jennifer Pagonis, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner Refugees.

Pagonis said 51 people are known to have drowned when a boat carrying migrants from Turkey to Greece sank in rough weather off a town 30 miles southwest of Izmir. An additional 35 people are missing and presumed dead, she added.

Up to 90 migrants have been missing since they tried to cross from Senegal and Western Sahara to the Canary Islands, Pagonis said.

And 31 people were drowned or missing in trying to reach Yemen from the Horn of Africa between Dec. 5 and 12, she said.

"Tens of thousands of boat people risk their lives each year in the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Aden, the Caribbean and off the coast of West Africa," Pagonis said. "Many are migrants seeking a better life, but some are also refugees fleeing persecution and violence."

200 Africans dead, missing after boats sink off Yemen: UN

GENEVA, Dec 18, 2007 (AFP) - About 200 African would-be immigrants are dead or missing after two boats they were travelling in sank off the coast of Yemen on the weekend, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said Tuesday.

One boat with 148 people on board sank Saturday near the Yemeni coast after an argument between traffickers in charge of the vessel, killing at least 58 people with 37 still missing, the UNHCR said.

The dead included 54 Ethiopians and four Somalis, the agency said.

Another boat with 270 passengers hit a rock and sank on Sunday as it was trying to evade a Yemeni security patrol. Only 173 passengers were able to swim to shore and the rest, including a number of children, remain missing.

"The survivors of the second boat told us that the traffickers were violent with them during the trip," said UNHCR spokeswoman Astrid van Genderen Tort.

"The passengers were violently roughed up and one man, who could not bear the beating any longer, jumped overboard and drowned," she said.

The number of illegal immigrants traversing the Gulf of Aden shot up dramatically between September and December, UNHCR said.

More than 1,400 clandestine immigrants have died in the zone this year, while more than 28,300 people managed to reach the Yemeni coast on some 300 vessels.

The crossing takes two days at best and is made especially dangerous by shark-infested waters, strong currents and inhumane conditions on poorly-maintained vessels open to the elements.

In September, 67 boats made the crossing and 264 people died. A total of 77 vessels left Somali shores in October and 347 people died .

Stepped up patrols by the Yemeni coastguard led to fewer crossings in November but the number of lives lost increased, with 205 dead aboard 37 boats.

In December, 27 vessels have so far left Somalia and a total of 186 people have died.

Algerian coast guard pulls nearly 40 boat people from water
9 January 2008

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) - The Algerian coast guard on Wednesday pulled nearly 40 migrants trying to make their way to Europe from the sea, yet another sign that the number of Algerians trying to make the treacherous journey is mounting.

Coast guard officials in the eastern city of Annaba said 38 people were stopped, in two groups. Twenty migrants were stopped some 80 kilometers (50 miles) off the coast at El Kala, 670 kilometers (415 miles) east of Algiers. A cargo ship had alerted officials to the presence of the boat people in full sea.

Another 18 migrants were stopped off the coast at Annaba, officials said.

They all were to appear before judicial authorities Feb. 24.

Young Algerians desperate for a better life are increasingly taking their chances on unseaworthy boats to escape to Europe. Nearly 1,600 would-be migrants were stopped in 2007, compared to 335 in 2005, according to official figures.

Others die at sea. In 2007, 83 bodies were pulled from the sea, compared to 29 in 2005.

The boat people phenomenon is new for Algeria, teeming with poor, unemployed, and despairing youth despite its wealth in oil and gas.

In October, the minister for solidarity, Djamel Ould Abbes, called for increased efforts to detect and dismantle smuggling networks.

Italian coastguard intercepts more than 300 boat people: spokesman

ROME, Jan 10, 2008 (AFP) - The Italian coastguard has intercepted more than 300 boat people sailing in chilly Mediterranean waters off Sicily and Sardinia in the past 24 hours, a spokesman said Thursday.

One vessel just 15 meters (50 feet) long was found crammed with 226 people, including seven women, attempting to reach the small island of Lampedusa, south of Sicily, early Thursday, the coastguard spokesman told AFP.

A second boat carrying 40 people was spotted about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Lampedusa, he said, adding that the passengers' nationality was not yet known.

Most people seeking to sneak into Italy by boat set off from nearby Libya, but come from all over Africa.

To the northwest, off of Sardinia, 40 Algerian boat people were intercepted on Wednesday evening, and another two boats with 23 people aboard were found Thursday, the spokesman said.

The risky voyage is far more common in warmer weather, but another 126 boat people were picked up on January 1 aboard three vessels off the coast of Morocco.

Last year saw a drop in arrivals of boat people, to 16,482 from 20,927 in 2006, according to the Italian interior ministry.

Fatalities among people attempting to reach Europe illegally by boat were also down slightly, according to the advocacy group Fortress Europe.

The Italy-based group, which compiles numbers of drownings and other deaths from press reports, put the figure for 2007 at 1,861, compared with 2,088 for 2006.

While fewer deaths were recorded overall, spikes were noted in the Sicilian Channel and the Aegean Sea.

Following lengthy negotiations, Rome and Tripoli signed an accord on December 29 promising joint patrols to combat illegal immigration.

Honduras gives 13 Cuban migrants 30-day permit; they want to reach US
10 January 2008

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) - Thirteen Cubans who arrived on the Honduran coast after 17 days at sea say they hope to reach the U.S.

"We hope to continue our trip to Miami," Pablo Manuel Leiva, the group's 49-year-old leader, told a news conference on Wednesday. The group includes seven men and five women ranging in age from 20 to 39, Leiva said.

The immigrants arrived on Tuesday in the coastal town of Omoa after leaving Cuba on Dec. 23.

"We sailed without problems for about six days, but then we met with strong winds and huge waves," Leiva said. "We were left without water and fuel and had to row with our arms and hands."

Immigration official Nelson Guzman said the Honduran government would allow the migrants to stay in the country for 30 days "so that during that time they can determine their final destination and their future."

In the past two years, more than 600 Cubans have arrived in Honduras, and most are granted temporary 15- or 30-day visas. The majority immediately leave for the U.S.

A boat with five Cuban immigrants arrived Saturday at a small island off the mainland, and another boat carrying 11 Cubans arrived Sunday at Diamond Rock, a town on Honduras' isolated, northeastern coastline.

Over 130 migrants die crossing Gulf of Aden last weekend: UNHCR

GENEVA, Jan 22, 2008 (AFP) - More than 130 mainly Somali migrants died trying to cross the Gulf of Aden into Yemen over the weekend, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday.

One boat carrying 135 passengers approached the Yemeni coast on Friday, when smugglers forced its occupants to jump overboard fearing capture by the Yemeni coastguard, UN High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman William Spindler told journalists.

"Those who resisted were beaten with sticks and stabbed. A large wave then capsized the boat, causing the death of 114 passengers and two smugglers," he said.

In another incident the following day, 10 women and six children died when a boat carrying 29 Somalis capsized off the coast in strong winds.

"The 13 male survivors told us four children had died under their parents' eyes from lack of food, water and exposure. The other two died from drowning," Spindler said.

In total, the UNHCR estimates that 157 people were killed or missing during the first 19 days of this year while attempting the hazardous crossing, while 2,452 people successfully arrived in Yemen.

Spindler said the UNHCR was increasing its presence and activities on both sides of the Gulf, and seeking to dissuade Somalis from attempting the voyage.

However, "many of those fleeing say conditions in their homeland are so bad that they are willing to take the risk," he noted.

More than 29,500 people arrived in Yemen from Somalia in 2007, while over 1,400 people died or remain missing.

More than 130 clandestine migrants reaching Spain's Canary islands

MADRID, May 5, 2008 (AFP) - Fifty-seven clandestine migrants landed in a boat on the Spanish island of Tenerife Sunday and another boat with 77 people on board was sighted off another of the Canaries islands, officials said.

The group which arrived in the Tenerife port of Los Cristianos in a small African fishing boat were helped by emergency services and most passengers were reported to be in good health.

One man was taken to a local hospital after suffering convulsions.

The other boat which was sighted south of the island of El Hierro was expected at the port of La Estaca on Monday morning and was escorted by rescuers. One of the passengers was taken to a hospital by helicopter after a bone fracture.

The Atlantic Ocean archipelago has been a magnet in recent years for mainly sub-Saharan African migrants aspiring to reach Europe.

The number of migrants who arrived last year on the islands though fell 60 percent from 2006, when a record 31,678 reached the Canary Islands.

Stepped up air and sea patrols by European Union's border control agency Frontex and repatriation agreements signed by Spain with several African countries that make it easier to send back clandestine migrants are credited for the decline.

Authorities fear many of the thousands of Africans who make the perilous journey towards Spanish soil each year die of thirst or exposure on the risky voyages but there is no way of knowing exactly how many have perished.

In March the Organisation for Human Rights in Andalucia estimated that over 900 would-be illegal migrants died at sea trying to reach Spain in 2007, the majority at the start of their journey close to the northwestern coast of Africa.

Italian island is end of line for many would-be immigrants
4 August 2008
Agence France Presse

One by one, a group of would-be immigrants stepped down shakily from the coastguard patrol boat on the southern Italian island of Lampedusa.

The 33 men, carrying no luggage, made the perilous journey from north Africa in search of a new life in Europe.

But after two nights and a day at sea, their vessel was about to sink some 50 kilometres (30 miles) off the coast of Lampedusa when they were picked up by Italian coastguards.

Wearing life jackets and huddling under a piece of tent canvas to protect them from the burning sunshine, the migrants received water and biscuits from workers from the Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders -- MSF) aid organisation.

Lampedusa is the favoured destination of many immigrants coming from north Africa, particularly from Libya, as it is the European territory that is closest to them.

When the weather is calm hundreds attempt the trip, with 1,200 arriving on Lampedusa last Wednesday and Thursday.

"In general they can't swim and when they get to the Libyan coast most are getting a glimpse of the sea for the first time," said a 32-year-old coastguard who gave his name as Domenico.

A few days earlier he had taken the helm of a fishing boat to steer 50 people to Lampedusa while another 120 people were crammed on to the coastguard launch which found them.

Traffickers provide migrants with a compass, an emergency contact number and sometimes a satellite telephone to signal their position.

On arrival the migrants throw this equipment into the sea to prevent their route from being traced.

Sporting a Ronaldhino football shirt, jeans and trainers, a boy named Alexis from Ivory Coast in West Africa who gave his age as 15, said he had paid 1,100 dollars to make the dangerous crossing.

"I thought I would die, but I had confidence in God," he said in hesitant French.

His compatriot and travel companion showed a large scar across his stomach, which he said came from a bullet wound received in his conflict-wracked country.

"I left Ivory Coast three years ago and worked for many months in Libya as a tomato picker to pay for the crossing," explained the young man.

Like his fellow migrants he carried no identification documents and his story was impossible to verify.

Immediately after reaching dry land migrants are taken to Lampedusa's emergency detention centre by truck.

To help the island cope with the influx of migrants in recent months, 70 air force troops joined police Monday to help guard the centre.

The deployment is part of nationwide measures which the Italian government says will boost security and curb illegal immigration.

But the tens of thousands of holiday-makers visiting the island for its colourful architecture and palm trees never see the migrants disembarking at the port.

"Crossing the Sicilian Channel -- a 280-kilometre (175-mile) stretch of sea between Lampedusa and Libya -- is always very dangerous," said Lieutenant Achille Selleri, head of the 40-strong coastguard detachment on Lampedusa.

"There are strong currents and boats are overcrowded. It is the equivalent of 20 people packed in car travelling for 2,000 kilometres."

In spite of this the number of desperate people making the perilous crossing in the hope of a new life in Europe is rising.

Of the 11,949 people who landed in Italy in the first six months of 2008, 10,402 arrived in Lampedusa, around double the number for the same period in 2007.

Although most will be refused permission to enter Europe, they will not be prevented from living in Lampedusa illegally.

According to MSF, 380 illegal immigrants died making the crossing from Libya to either Sicily or Malta in the first half of this year, compared with 500 in 2007.

Dozens of migrants die crossing Gulf of Aden: UNHCR
10 September 2008
Agence France Presse

More than two dozen people died when smugglers shipping them across the Gulf of Aden forced them overboard off the coast of Yemen and around 20 bodies are missing, the UN refugee agency said Wednesday.

At least 26 people died in the incident on September 8 which saw about 120 people forced overboard in deep water at gunpoint, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said in a statement, citing survivors.

"They said those who refused (to go overboard) were pushed and beaten. Some were killed. Survivors said they had earlier been assured by the smugglers that a smaller vessel would take them ashore, but none arrived," the UNHCR said.

Some 74 survivors made it to the beach and are now being cared for at the UNHCR's reception centre at Ahwar in Yemen.

The UN agency has regularly voiced its concern over the perilous crossing where would-be migrants have to run the gauntlet of unsafe boats, rough seas and unscrupulous smugglers.

It said it believes smugglers to be attempting to take advantage of a perceived decline in coastal surveillance during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The UNHCR said that at least 25,859 people have arrived in Yemen from Somalia this year, while more than 200 people have died and at least 225 remain missing.

11 Indonesians dead in Malaysia boat accident

AFP - 1 hour 24 minutes ago

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 30, 2008 (AFP) - Eleven Indonesians drowned early Tuesday after a wooden boat carrying dozens of suspected illegal migrants capsized off the coast of Malaysia, maritime officials said.

The boat, believed to be carrying about 150 people, sank shortly after leaving Port Klang on the west coast en route to Indonesia's Sumatra island across the narrow Straits of Malacca.

Police said they believed the Indonesians were trying to head home for the Eid al-Fitr holidays, marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

"We suspect the boat was overloaded. It is a wooden boat meant for carrying goods and not for ferrying people. But it is usually used to carry illegals," local marine police chief Marzuki Ismail told AFP.

Another maritime official, Mohamad Mat Yusop, said all 11 dead were women.

Weather conditions were good at the time of the incident.

Malaysia has launched a 60-strong search and rescue operation involving teams of divers.

Marzuki said the Indonesians were en route to Tanjung Balai in north Sumatra.

"We are investigating the incident. We have had a few similar incidents in the past, especially during Eid al-Fitr, where many head home," he said.

MARINE POLICE THWART ATTEMPT BY 77 FILIPINOS TO ENTER M'SIA ILLEGALLY

Bernama - 1 hour 33 minutes ago

SANDAKAN, Oct 14 (Bernama) -- Marine police foiled an attempt by 77 Filipinos to enter Malaysia illegally when they stopped them near Pamaguan Island, here last night.

Sabah marine police deputy chief, Supt Wan Shazali Wan Abdul Rahman, said the Filipinos, comprising 31 men, 23 women and 23 children, sailing in two dugouts and a pump boat, were arrested near the island at 11.40pm.

"The skippers of the two dugouts, however, managed to escape by diving into the sea while the boat driver, a Filipino in his 30's and without any identification document, was arrested," Wan Shazali told a press conference here today.

He said the dugouts and the pump boat were believed to be heading for Sungai Batu Dua, Sungai Batu Tiga and Sungai Batu Putih to land the illegals.

The initial investigation found that they came from Basilan Island in southern Philippines.

They have been handed over to the Immigration Department for further action, including deportation.

FEATURE-Greece a "prison" for migrants amid EU policy mess

PATRAS, Greece, Nov 7 (Reuters) - The West's war against the Taliban drove Khalid Mohamed from his home. But his search for asylum in Europe has left him trapped in a shanty town in Greece, ignored by the government and abused by police.

Greece's western port of Patras has become a frontier for Europe's unwanted migrants. Hundreds of Afghans live crammed into dirty shacks in a slum overlooked by plush apartment blocks, hoping to stow away aboard a ferry bound for Italy, where asylum conditions are easier.

For Mohamed, who fled central Afghanistan last year after losing friends and family in the war, it is a prison camp. He is caught in a limbo without papers or rights: forbidden to stay in Greece but prevented from leaving.

It is a situation human rights campaigners say illustrates a deepening chaos at the heart of EU migration policy.

"We never came here to be in prison. We came to be free," said 28-year-old Mohamed, as his five room-mates huddle around a bubbling hookah. Mohamed, who worked as a UN translator in Afghanistan, has a receipt for his asylum request but has lost hope of being accepted: "Life here's miserable. We've nothing."

Greece is a new frontline for immigration in Europe. As Spain and Italy have cracked down on migrants from the Middle East and Africa, those arrested by Greece rose to 112,000 last year from 40,000 in 2005, many of them from countries at war.

In Patras, Afghan men in dirty T-shirts live in shacks cobbled together from bits of wood and draped in plastic sheets, with a communal shower and no electricity. Skin and respiratory diseases are rife, but going to a hospital risks arrest.

One man has an arm in plaster, another has a bandaged leg: injuries from police beatings, they say. Medical volunteers at the camp say they often treat victims of police abuse, including a man with a broken jaw last week, but the Interior Ministry said it was unaware of any problem.

"These people come thinking Europe is a haven for human rights but we treat them like animals," said Marcella Tommasi, head of a Doctors Without Borders centre at Patras.

Greece's treatment of migrants is, says the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, among the toughest in the 27-nation bloc. It accepted just 0.6 per cent of 25,113 asylum applicants in 2007, a disturbingly low rate according to UNHCR.

A new EU pact, approved last month, may worsen the illegal migrants' situation. The brainchild of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the non-binding deal urges states to tighten external borders, increase repatriations and attract skilled migrants.

A separate EU directive allows illegal migrants to be held for up to 18 months. "It's not humane to hold people for 18 months," said Tommasi. "And it won't stop them coming."

POLITICAL "BLAH BLAH"

The European Commission estimates there are up to 8 million illegal migrants among the bloc's 500-million population, with as many as half a million arriving every year.

"EU governments have made it so difficult to hire legal migrants that everyone is being forced down the illegal route," said Martin Baldwin-Edwards, head of the Mediterranean Migration Observatory, who has just finished a report for the Commission.

"The pact insists Europe doesn't need unskilled immigrants, but every country does, especially in southern Europe," he said, citing their importance to the agricultural and service sectors.

Dismissing the EU pact as "political blah blah," Baldwin-Edwards points to its failings: it makes no progress in reaching a common definition of asylum, and does nothing to help millions of migrants living in limbo like Khalid.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis has appealed to Greece's European Union partners for more help in coping with the influx of aslyum seekers and economic migrants, but the new agreement leaves the onus on individual governments to cope.

EU asylum rules, called the Dublin Regulation, say would-be refugees must return to where they entered the bloc to make their application, usually border states like Greece and Italy.

"This is an undue burden on countries with external borders," said Yiorgos Tsarbopoulos, local head of UNHCR. "This is not European solidarity."

With one of the highest unemployment rates in the euro zone and a fifth of Greeks living in poverty, the government has higher priorities than migrants' rights, Tsarbopoulos said.

Unable to cope, Greece was breaking the Geneva Convention by routinely rejecting asylum applicants from war zones like Afghanistan, he said. A government spokesman denied this.

Campaigners say Greece ignores its obligation to provide translators at the border for asylum seekers, and conditions in immigrant detention centres are appalling. MSF denounced a "humanitarian crisis" at one centre on Lesbos island, where hundreds were badly sickened in October by polluted drinking water.

Ironically, given their harsh treatment, economists say migrants have helped to fuel a decade of growth in Greece.

"Migrants give flexibility to the labour market and lower costs in important sectors like tourism, construction, agriculture and retail," said Nicholas Magginas of National Bank of Greece, adding that they now made up 15 pct of the workforce.

MIGRANTS "LIKE GHOSTS"

Radwan Kharbouche became a campaigner for immigrants' rights in Greece after he lost both his legs and the use of one arm when he was blown up by a mine crossing the border from Turkey in 2002. He says he had to flee to Italy to receive aid and asylum, but has returned to Greece to seek justice.

"Greece is the worst government in Europe for migrants. They knew about my case but they did nothing," said the 29-year-old Moroccan, whose six operations were paid for by private donors.

Authorities have vowed to clear the border minefields, which have killed more than 80 people since 1994, before 2014. In the meantime, four more migrants were killed in September.

"People are walking around like ghosts. They don't exist for the state but they are there," said UNHCR's Tsarbopoulos, adding Greece faced a "crisis situation" as anger at migrants rises.

Residents of another Aegean island close to Turkey, Patmos, refused in August to accept more migrants in a holding centre which contained more people than island's Greek population.

"It was very difficult because of the massive arrival of immigrants whose behaviour and living conditions were not appropriate," said Anna Romeou, head of the hoteliers of Patmos. "Citizens were outraged, we only had one doctor on the island ... and about 400 illegal migrants who had to be checked."

Rising crime and drug abuse has sparked criticism from right-wing groups of the rising migrant population in central Athens. A pitched battle there between rival African gangs with machetes in August made front-page headlines.

"As European economies slow, there'll be much more obvious competition between low-skilled local workers and migrants," said Baldwin-Edwards. "It's going to get really bad."

1,000 immigrants apprehended off Italy: report
26 December 2008
Agence France Presse

About 1,000 African immigrants travelling on four vessels were apprehended off Italy's southernmost island of Lampedusa overnight and on Friday, the ANSA news agency reported.

Two of the ships ran into trouble on Thursday and were helped by the Italian navy. The third arrived in Lampedusa on its own at dawn. A fourth ship was intercepted on Friday afternoon off Lampedusa.

The latest arrivals have stretched the limits of the detention centre in Lampedusa, which has a capacity of 850. There are already 160 people housed there, of whom 100 are children.

Immigrant arrivals by sea to Italy have greatly increased this year, surpassing 24,000 from January to mid-September, compared to a little more than 14,000 over the same period in 2007, according to Italy's interior ministry.

Some 50,000 migrants risked sea crossing from Somalia in 2008
9 January 2009
Agence France Presse

More than 50,000 migrants resorted to smugglers for the treacherous sea crossing between Somalia and Yemen in 2008, an increase of 70 percent over the previous year, the UN refugee agency said Friday.

At least 590 people drowned and another 359 were reported missing during the crossing of the shark-infested Gulf of Aden, Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said.

"The increase in arrivals reflects the desperate situation in Somalia and the Horn of Africa, a region scarred by civil war, political instability, famine and poverty," Redmond told reporters.

"Most of the deaths were due to drowning after passengers were forced overboard in treacherous waters far off the Yemen coast in a bid by the smugglers to avoid detection by Yemen authorities," he added.

The previous year 29,500 people were known to have made the crossing and 1,400 died.

The crossing takes two days at best and is made especially dangerous by sharks, strong currents and inhumane conditions on poorly maintained vessels open to the elements.

The UNHCR said it was strengthening of reception conditions in Yemen and carrying out information campaigns in the Horn of Africa to warn of the dangers of using smugglers.

Bay of Bengal boat people risk death for better future
19 January 2009
Agence France Presse

Momtaz Mia cannot exactly recall how long he was on the rickety boat that broke down in the middle of Bay of Bengal after he left Bangladesh's southeastern island of Maheshkhali.

"We were 71 -- 14 Bangladeshis and the rest were Rohingya people from Myanmar. I think on the tenth day the boat engine gave in," Mia, 35, told AFP at his home near the Bangladesh town of Teknaf.

"All of us started crying and praying to Allah as our food and water was finished. Our boat was left at the mercy of the wind," he said of the voyage, in October last year.

"Allah answered our call as rain came. We wet all our clothes to preserve water."

Every year, thousands of Bangladeshis like Mia -- as well as many Muslim Rohingya people originally from Myanmar -- take the dangerous boat ride from Bangladesh's unguarded coast.

They flee persecution and poverty in the hope of finding safety and jobs in Malaysia or other southeast Asian nations.

Mia, a father of two, and the other migrants stuck in the boat were eventually plucked from the vast expanses of the Bay of Bengal by a Sri Lankan Navy patrol hunting for Tamil Tiger gun runners.

Described as being in a "half-dead" condition, they were taken to Sri Lanka for treatment and repatriated to Bangladesh. Others on the boat were not so lucky.

At one point while lost at sea, "we saw a trawler and 13 Rohingyas jumped into the sea and tried to swim to the boat," Mia said.

"But it left, thinking we were pirates. All of them died in the cold water."

Despite the risk of death, Asia's new boat people continue to head out into the Bay of Bengal.

In the past three weeks, India's coast guard says it has rescued 446 Bangladeshis and Rohingyas. Some claimed to have been arrested by Thai authorities, towed out to sea and abandoned.

Indian coast guard commander S.P. Sharma, whose boats found several vessels floating in stormy seas off India's Andaman and Nicobar islands, said hundreds more may have died.

"Interviews with survivors reveal they are Rohingya boat people living along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border. We fear several hundreds are still missing," he said.

Bangladeshi security officials told AFP that in the last few weeks alone, they have arrested around 100 people, many of them Rohingyas, as they were about to embark on the journey to Malaysia.

"The mostly Rohingya refugees are brought to the (Bangladeshi) coastal islands of Shaparir Dwip and Maheshkhali in small fishing boats. They then join a big boat," said local border security chief Major Helal, who uses one name.

"We arrested 100 in recent drives. Each had paid 300 dollars to the boat owner for a trip to Malaysia."

"The Rohingyas are so desperate," said local Bangladeshi police chief Jashim Uddin.

His town of Teknaf, on the border with Myanmar, is home to 28,000 Rohingya refugees who live in squalid camps. The United Nations estimates up to 300,000 Rohingyas live in southern Bangladesh, many of them blending in with the local community.

The Rohingya are stateless and face persecution from Myanmar's military regime, so thousands cross into Bangladesh and search for a new life elsewhere.

"There are many Rohingyas who went to Malaysia using this route and it changed their fortune. Their success stories lured other Rohingyas and some Bangladeshis to attempt this deadly journey," said Uddin.

But Helal said even though Bangladesh has tried to step up coastal patrols, the flow of boat people cannot be stopped.

"Our southern coastline is 200 kilometres (125 miles) long, and thousands of fishing boats operate there. We don't have the capacity to monitor the whole area, especially when the people don't care for their lives," he said.

Boat people swamp Malta detention centre
18 February 2009
Agence France Presse

More than 200 boat people arrived at an already overcrowded detention centre in the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta on Wednesday, an army spokesman said.

The group of 227 people, most from Somalia, had come ashore near the Maltese capital Valletta aboard a fishing boat no more than 20 metres (65 feet) long, the spokesman told AFP.

Twenty-two women and two children were among the new arrivals thought to be mainly economic migrants.

It was the third large group to arrive this year after groups of 262 and 115 earlier this month.

Many of the 262 are being repatriated because they do not qualify for refugee status on either political or humanitarian grounds, the government announced recently.

Nearly 300 illegal immigrants arrive at Italian islands
4 March 2009
Agence France Presse

The Italian coast guard said Wednesday a total of 291 illegal immigrants have arrived within the span of a few hours at the Italian islands of Lampedusa and Sicily.

The first boatload of 120 people, all from North Africa, was picked up at sea overnight by an Italian military launch.

A second boat carrying 171 would-be immigrants mainly from Nigeria, including 27 women and a newborn, arrived early Wednesday at the port of Lampedusa.

The reception centre on the tiny island is currently overcrowded holding some 500 people and the latest arrivals are waiting to be transferred to another centre.

Lampedusa has been the scene of violent protests by some migrants at the centre who are opposed to Italy's new policy of quick repatriations.

Some 31,700 immigrants landed on Lampedusa in 2008, a 75 percent increase from the previous year, according to official figures.

Italy sentences shipowner to 50 years for immigrant deaths
11 March 2009
Agence France Presse

An appeals court in southern Italy sentenced a Pakistani shipowner to 30 years in prison for his role in the drowning deaths of 283 illegal immigrants more than a decade ago, ANSA reported Wednesday.

Maltese resident Ahmed Sheik Turab, 48, was considered the organiser of a 1996 sea journey of some 400 immigrants from Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka between Malta and Sicily.

After the group was transferred from one boat to another in open waters, the latter vessel began to leak and the majority of the illegals on board drowned.

According to survivors' testimony, the smugglers did not call for help in what is considered one of the most tragic tales to date of illegal immigration in the Mediterranean region.

The same court sentenced a Lebanese skipper of one of the boats to 30 years in jail last April for homocide.

More immigrant boatloads head to Italian islands
15 March 2009
Agence France Presse

Hundreds more immigrants sailed to the Italian islands of Lampedusa and its tiny north-eastern neighbour Linosa on Sunday, according to Sicilian coastal authorities.

Over the course of the morning, 68 migrants, including 13 women, were intercepted off the coast of Lampedusa, which is closer to Tunisia than Sicily, an official told AFP.

Two more boats, carrying 82 and 77 illegal immigrants each, landed on Linosa around the same time, the official said, adding that another 69, including 16 women and one child, had landed on Lampedusa Saturday night.

Two people from the Lampedusa boats were receiving hospital treatment for breathing problems, ANSA news agency said.

Nearly 37,000 illegal immigrants arrived on Italy's shores in 2008, a 75 percent hike from the previous year, the interior ministry reported.

Tunisia indicated concern in February over the workings of the overcrowded Lampedusa detention network.

UNHCR: French Navy helps save 85 African migrants
24 March 2009

GENEVA (AP) - The French Navy helped rescue 85 African migrants from the Gulf of Aden after a smuggler's boat capsized at port, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday.

Seven people drowned in the incident Saturday and five more are missing and presumed dead, said spokesman Ron Redmond.

"We are grateful to the French Navy and the Yemeni authorities, including port officials and the coast guard, for the rescue operation," he told journalists in Geneva, where UNHCR has its headquarters.

The rickety vessel packed with Somali and Ethiopian migrants was found adrift and taking water 86 kilometers off Yemen's coast by a French frigate, he said.

The Floreal stopped the leak in the smugglers' boat and towed it toward the Yemeni port of Aden. But the passengers tipped the vessel over when they rushed to disembark as it docked at a pier, Redmond said.

Four smugglers also were rescued in the operation and subsequently arrested. Nineteen of the passengers were admitted to hospital, while 66 were transferred to the care of a local aid agency, he said.

It was the latest deadly incident for the mainly Somali refugees who try to make the treacherous voyage from the Horn of Africa to the Arabian peninsula. Hundreds die every year, with many drowning or being attacked by pirates.

Redmond said 260 boats and 13,250 people have safely made the crossing this year. The death toll stands at 54, with another 36 missing at sea.

UNHCR says over 50,000 migrants last year crossed the Gulf of Aden, which links the Indian Ocean to the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea.

This thread is so sad. May all of their souls rest in peace.

Tragedy at sea: some illegal immigration disasters
31 March 2009
Agence France Presse

More than 200 illegal immigrants were feared drowned on Tuesday a day after three boats sank in stormy weather off the Libyan coast.

It is one of the worst illegal immigration-related dramas since 2000.

--2000--

- Dec 13: AUSTRALIA - 163 illegal immigrants, from the Middle East, are reported missing during a passage from Indonesia.

--2001--

- Oct: INDONESIA - Some 350, mainly Iraqi, immigrants drown off the island of Java.

--2003--

- June 20: TUNISIA - 12 are found dead and 200 listed as missing after a boat carrying illegal immigrants from several African countries sinks.

--2004--

- March 31: GULF OF ADEN - More than 100 Ethiopian refugees, who were attempting to reach Yemen, are listed as missing after the boat they were travelling on collides with a Somali vessel.

--2005--

- March 3: the GULF OF ADEN - More than 100 Ethiopians and Somalians are killed when trying to sail to Yemen.

- Aug 16: CENTRAL AMERICA - 104 immigrants are reported missing after an Ecuadorian boat that was transporting them illegally to central America sinks.

--2006--

- September/October: The GULF OF ADEN - At least 150 Africans are reported as dead or missing as they seek to reach Yemen. Some of the would-be immigrants are reported to have been thrown to the sharks by their traffickers.

- Mid-Dec: SENEGAL - Around 100 illegal immigrants, seeking to reach Spain, are lost when their dugout sinks.

- Dec 29: YEMEN - 34 are killed and 124 listed as missing at sea after Yemeni police open fire on a group of boats attempting to smuggle 515 people from Somalia to Yemen.

--2007--

- Feb: THE GULF OF ADEN - At least 107 Ethiopians and Somalians are drowned as they try to reach Yemen.

- March: YEMEN - At least 100 people are dead or missing after smugglers brandishing knives forced hundreds of Somalis and Ethiopians into high seas off the coast of Yemen.

- June: ITALY - 210 illegal immigrants are drowned or listed as missing off Sicily as they make the crossing from north Africa to Europe.

- Dec 15-16: THE GULF OF ADEN - Almost 200 people reported as dead or missing when two boats sink between Somalia and Yemen.

--2008--

- Jan 18-19: GULF OF ADEN - More than 130 mainly Somali immigrants die as they travel to Yemen.

- June 16: LIBYA - At least 40 are killed and 100 missing after a boat carrying illegal immigrants from Libya to Italy sinks.

- Oct 10: THE GULF OF ADEN - Some 138 illegal immigrants are thrown overboard by traffickers who were transporting them from Somalia to Yemen.

--2009--

- Jan: THAILAND - Hundreds of refugees from a Myanmar minority who were fleeing their country are lost at sea. Some of them are part of a group that Thailand is accused of setting adrift on the high seas.

- March 30: LIBYA - At least 21 people die and 213 illegal immigrants are still missing after three boats sink in a storm off Libya.

A look at migrants traveling Mediterranean Sea
31 March 2009

Hundreds of African, Asian and Middle Eastern migrants are feared dead after their overloaded, rickety boat capsized in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Libya Friday. Here's a look at other incidents in which migrants have tried to make the perilous crossing:

-- Jan. 1, 2009: Italian authorities rescue more than 450 would-be migrants off the southern island of Lampedusa. Authorities said the 457 people, many from Africa, were traveling on three separate boats and were intercepted overnight.

-- July 14, 2008: The Italian coast guard finds the bodies of three migrants who drowned after leaping from a motorized dinghy as the coast guard approached. Another 10 migrants were missing.

-- June 29, 2008: According to Italian news reports, seven migrants were feared dead after the makeshift boat that was carrying them to Europe capsized in Libyan waters about 150 miles (240 kilometers) southeast of the Italian island of Lampedusa.

-- June 17, 2008: Egypt's ambassador to Libya says a survivor told him that a fishing vessel packed with about 150 illegal migrants sank in the Mediterranean Sea near the Libyan coast earlier in June, with only two people surviving.

-- Oct. 28, 2007: At least 15 migrants drowned in the waters off the Italian coast in two separate incidents, according to Italian news reports. In one incident, a boat carrying more than 120 people ran aground about 200 yards (180 meters) off the Calabrian coast.

Libya says most illegals to Europe travel from Niger
4 April 2009
Agence France Presse

About 80 percent of illegal migrants who pass through Libya hoping to cross the Mediterranean to Europe enter the country from Niger, Interior Minister Abdelfattah Yunis al-Obeidi said on Saturday.

Obeidi in a meeting with his Niger counterpart Albadeh Abouba urged closer cooperation between the two neighbours to "find radical solutions" to a phenomenon that endangered Libya's security, the state news agency JANA said.

"Taking into account its geographic location and limited means, Libya can not fight this phenomenon on its own," he said, adding that the two countries would launch joint border patrols.

More than 200 illegal migrants are feared drowned after their boat sank on April 29. Only 23 people have been rescued after the boat with 257 migrants sank off Libya.

Only 21 bodies have been recovered since the boat was caught in a violent storm, according to the International Organisation for Migration and the Libyan authorities.

Rescued migrants stranded at sea off Italian coast
17 April 2009
Agence France Presse

A pregnant woman and several wounded among 154 migrants rescued by a Turkish ship off the southern Italian coast were stranded at sea Friday after Italy and Malta argued about who should take them in.

The illegal migrants are aboard the Turkish ship MV Pinar sailing under the Panamanian flag which on Thursday picked them up from two boats about 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of the Italian island of Lampedusa.

The ship also picked up a body from the water.

The Maltese armed forces said 25 of the passengers were wounded "of whom seven urgently need medical aid as they have sustained fractures," and added that the stranded passengers included a pregnant woman.

The Maltese authorities asked the crew to head to the nearest port of Lampedusa. But Rome said that because the migrants had been rescued in a Maltese "intervention zone" they were Valletta's responsibility.

"I asked and will continue to ask Malta to take the responsibility that they committed to respecting by signing international agreements..." the Italian ANSA news agency quoted Interior Minister Roberto Maroni as saying.

Maroni added that the intervention zones were "well defined but often those who should intervene do not do so."

His Maltese counterpart, Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, hit back saying Rome's stance was "unacceptable."

"The Maltese state can never accept immigrants who are rescued near the Italian coast. For the last 45 years Italy has respected the agreement under which migrants rescued at sea are taken to the nearest port.

"We see that Italy is trying to change the rules and that is unacceptable," he was quoted as saying.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees urged the two countries to take in the rescued migrants.

"The situation aboard the rescue ship is becoming problematic and the conditions at sea are going to get worse," said UNHCR spokeswoman Laura Boldrini.

She urged them to leave aside "the legal aspects," saying the need of the hour was to let them in "so they can get humanitarian and medical aid."

Nearly 37,000 immigrants landed on Italian coasts last year, 75 percent more than in 2007, according to the interior ministry. A further 2,775 arrived in Malta in 2008.

Ship that rescued 140 migrants stopped off Lampedusa: report
18 April 2009
Agence France Presse

The Turkish merchant ship that saved 140 migrants who Italy and Malta have refused to welcome has been stopped off the Italian island of Lampedusa, the ANSA news agency reported Saturday.

A pregnant woman and several wounded were among the migrants rescued by the Panamanian-flagged MV Pinar, which on Thursday picked them up from two boats about 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of Lampedusa.

They remain at sea as Italy and Malta argue over who should take them in.

The ship has been stopped at the limit of Italy's coastal zone for maritime search and rescue operations, the Italian news agency said.

The Italian coast guard has brought food, water and blankets to the ship for the migrants, who were also examined by two doctors who put their number at 140, lower than the original figure of 154 people, ANSA said.

Two people were brought to shore at Lampedusa on Friday for medical reasons.

The Maltese authorities Friday asked the Pinar's crew to head to the nearest port of Lampedusa, but Rome said that because the migrants had been rescued in a Maltese "intervention zone" they were Valletta's responsibility.

Malta called that stance "unacceptable", saying that for the last 45 years Italy has respected the agreement under which migrants rescued at sea should be taken to the nearest port.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has urged the two countries to take in the rescued migrants.

"The situation aboard the rescue ship is becoming problematic and the conditions at sea are going to get worse," said UNHCR spokeswoman Laura Boldrini.

She urged them to leave aside "the legal aspects," saying the need of the hour was to let them in "so they can get humanitarian and medical aid."

Nearly 37,000 immigrants landed on Italian coasts last year, 75 percent more than in 2007, according to the interior ministry. A further 2,775 arrived in Malta in 2008.

Mauritanian coast guard rescue 109 immigrants at sea
19 April 2009
Agence France Presse

The Mauritanian coast guard rescued 109 illegal African immigrants whose boat had broken down in Mauritanian waters en route to Spain's Canary Islands, a security source told AFP Sunday.

"There were 110, one of them had died, and the coast guards were able to rescue the others. Two of them were admitted on the hospital in (the northern city of) Nouadhibou where they are now in stable condition," the source said.

The illegal immigrants left neighbouring Senegal over ten days ago hoping to reach the Canary Islands, which are part of the European Union, but their boat had engine troubles, the source said.

With food and water running out, the immigrants had begun drinking sea water. Fatigue, hunger and the cold left them weakened, he added.

The rescued immigrants, who included 47 Malians, 25 Senegalese, 18 Guineans, nine Ivorians and other West Africans, will be repatriated in the coming days.

Mauritania is an important transit point for would-be immigrants hoping to reach the Canary Islands in small open boats known locally as pirogues.

Malta patrol boat rescues migrants
30 April 2009
Agence France Presse

A Maltese army patrol boat on Thursday rescued 66 illegal migrants off the coast of the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, authorities said.

The migrants, who were "in distress and whose boat was without fuel and adrift," were rescued near Lampedusa, a statement by the Maltese armed forces said.

Two of the immigrants were women, one of whom was reportedly suffering from severe dehydration.

Both Malta and Italy are grappling with a sharp spike in illegal immigration from outside the European Union, with 36,900 arriving in Italy last year -- a 75 percent increase from 2007 -- and a record 2,775 landing in Malta, whose population is about 400,000.

Australia refugee boat blast act of sabotage: report
9 May 2009
Agence France Presse

An explosion on a people-smuggling boat that killed five Afghan refugees and injured dozens of others was an act of sabotage by the Indonesian crew, a report said Saturday.

The crew spread fuel over the boat's deck to force authorities to take the refugees on board in the moments before the April 16 blast, The Australian newspaper reported.

"It is firming that it was deliberate," it quoted a police source as saying. "Fuel was definitely splashed around the vessel."

"There was some degree of violence and punching on the boat. The Indonesians splashed (the petrol) around so there would be no choice, (the authorities) would have to take the passengers."

The boat was under the guard of a navy ship awaiting escort to Christmas Island immigration prison when it exploded and sank, and a small navy party was on board keeping watch.

Lieutenant Commander Barry Learoyd, commander of the navy ship, has said he received a "high threat" message from the boarding party in the moments before the blast, indicating something was amiss.

"The recurring theme here is that the Indonesians splashed petrol around the vessel so their passengers would have to be rescued and taken aboard the naval ship," the source said.

In the hours after the explosion Colin Barnett, the premier of Western Australia state, claimed the refugees had doused their boat in petrol, but Canberra has refused to speculate on the cause of the incident, which is under police investigation.

Consular officials said Muhammad Tahir, who was the refugee boat's cook, was paid between 500 dollars (380 US dollars) and 800 dollars for the journey, but didn't realise the passengers were asylum-seekers.

"He thought his duty was to bring people and goods to the island and someone would receive them, but in fact they were captured by Australian border protection," said Indonesian vice-consul Nurul Sofia Soeparan.

Police had "taken an interest" in another of the Indonesian crew, Beni, The Australian said.

The treatment of boatpeople remains a sensitive issue in Australia after the previous conservative government incorrectly accused refugees in 2001 of throwing children into the sea in an attempt to force a rescue and asylum.

Now in opposition, the conservatives have blamed a softening in refugee policy for an increase in the number of boatpeople making for Australia's shores, with the latest boat being the sixth intercepted this year.

Indonesia detains 69 Afghan migrants
4 June 2009

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Indonesian authorities have detained 69 Afghan migrants found stranded in their boat while trying to reach Australia.

Local chief detective Christian Tanao says 59 Afghans were detained Wednesday after their ship was stranded on the eastern coast of Sumba island by big waves and bad weather. He says 10 others who escaped were captured Thursday.

Indonesia is increasingly being used as a transit point for illegal migrants from war-ravaged countries looking for a better life in Australia.

Tanao says four Indonesians also were arrested on suspicion of people-smuggling.

Small Greek island is migrants' gateway to Europe
17 June 2009
Agence France Presse

The azure waters of tiny Agathonissi are as inviting as Greece's other Aegean Sea islands, but here a coastguard flotilla, not tourist yachts, takes up most of the picturesque harbour.

The island off Turkey's west coast has a permanent population of around 100 and welcomes at least double that number of tourists in the summer.

But it is also a magnet for thousands of illegal immigrants from Asia and Africa crossing these smuggler-infested waters that constitute the European Union's southeastern border.

"We've been coming here for about 16 years, and every year it gets worse," says Michael, a 60-year-old Briton preparing breakfast on board his yacht. "It's sad but something has to be done."

Last year alone, some 5,000 migrants -- 50 times the population -- were detained on Agathonissi, said local municipal councillor Stelios Kamitsis.

An EU summit in Brussels Thursday and Friday has pledged to address repeated calls from Greece and the other "frontline" states of Cyprus, Malta and Italy for help in securing maritime borders against the daily influx.

Last week, Athens' conservative government warned that immigration was pushing the country's resources to the limit. "Given the seriousness of the situation, a number of measures must be adopted without delay," Prime Miniser Costas Karamanlis urged EU leaders.

Back on the Agathonissi island pier, a patrol boat has just arrived with a fresh load of bedraggled would-be immigrants, a group of 16 men, three women and a baby.

"This is Greece?" gasps Osef Ahmadi, an exhausted 25-year-old clutching a small bag of belongings. With him are his brother Ali, his wife Leyla and their baby daughter Mariam, aged one. They claim to be Afghan.

The small family left Afghanistan's Wardak province a month ago, paying 10,000 euros (14,000 dollars) for passage to the Turkish coast on a truck, says Osef.

As he speaks, the coast guards produce the slashed remains of an inflatable dinghy on which the migrants entered Greek waters.

"We found them on the maritime border with Turkey, around three nautical miles from the island," says Dimitris Stratis, the harbour master of neighbouring Patmos island which has jurisdiction over the area.

"It's the usual story, they tore the dinghy so they would be rescued as castaways and avoid being arrested for illegal entry into Greece," he notes.

On the pier, police officers separate the men from the three women in the group. Lacking identity papers, the men are asked to give their name and those of their parents, their age and nationality. The women follow.

"Cheers, smile," says a policeman snapping their mugshots under the blazing mid-morning sun.

Based on the migrants' statements, the final tally reads: 19 Afghans and one Burmese, aged 15-30.

With the identification phase complete, the group are lined up and taken to a 30-square-metre (320-square-feet) warehouse near the harbour that will serve as their home for the coming days.

"How long will we stay here?" asks Roya Hosseini, a 28-year-old woman accompanied by her husband Javed. She is dressed in brightly-coloured clothes and wears no veil.

"I want to join my brother who lives in Italy, but they've taken our cellphone SIM cards," says 19-year-old Isaha Han, who is barefoot after losing his shoes in the boat.

The warehouse only emptied a day earlier when a group of Pakistanis who slept inside for four days were removed and transferred to the nearby island of Samos that has a larger migrant reception centre.

A day later, another 50 migrants fished out of the sea are brought here too.

"The state offered to build a reception centre on the island but we refused as it's bad for tourism," said councillor Kamitsis.

"Sometimes the migrants steal our goats but that's not important -- it's the diseases we're worried about," says the councillor's wife Chryssoula.

Brussels promised "a determined European response based on firmness, solidarity and shared responsibility", and stressed the need to beef up the Frontex border agency conducting sea patrols, in a pre-summit statement.

But Athens already announced some of its own measures last week -- including beefed up penalties for people smugglers and extending maximum detention for migrants from the current three months to 12 -- to try to stem the influx.

In 2008, Greek coast guards arrested 15,315 migrants as they tried to enter the country illegally by boat, a 65 percent spike over 2007, the merchant marine ministry said.

Thousands more have also died over the years trying to make sea crossings into the EU.

In all, more than 146,000 illegals were caught in Greece last year, up from the 122,000 arrested in 2007 and a huge increase over the 45,000 arrested in 2004, the interior ministry said.

Greek officials also blame Turkey for taking insufficient action to stem the outflow of clandestine migrants from its territory.

"We mount daily patrols but without Turkey's help the problem will not be solved," says the Patmos harbour master.

Seven migrant bodies found at Spanish beach: press
29 June 2009
Agence France Presse

The bodies of seven African migrants were found at a beach in southern Spain Monday and emergency services were searching for possible survivors from a small boat which ran aground, Spanish media said.

Two men and two women, thought to be of Moroccan nationality, were found dead early Monday near the port of Cadiz, said a spokesman for the local authority.

The bodies of three more migrants, all men, were found later in the day, the newspaper El Mundo said on its website.

It said emergency services had rescued 10 people, four of them children, after the small open boat they were on sank near the Trafalgar lighthouse, 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Cadiz.

Between 30 to 40 people could have been aboard the wooden boat and a rescue operation involving the Red Cross and the police was continuing late Monday, El Mundo said.

Spain has been a magnet for years for African migrants aspiring to reach Europe.

Authorities fear many of the thousands of Africans who make the perilous journey towards Spanish soil in simple boats die of thirst, hunger or exposure, but there is no way of knowing exactly how many have perished.

A record 31,678 people from sub-Saharan Africa reached Spain's Canary Islands in 2006 on small boats from Africa, but the figure dropped to 1,318 in the first quarter of 2009.

In February, the sinking of a boat off the Canaries killed 25 people, including 19 children.

No sign of 'missing' migrants off Indonesia: official
9 July 2009
Agence France Presse

The Indonesian navy has failed to find any trace of 74 Afghan migrants missing in treacherous waters off eastern Flores island, an officer said Thursday amid confusion about their fate.

The navy's Eastern Fleet initiated the search after Indonesian authorities were told the boat had gone missing by Australian police, officials said.

But police involved in the search said they now suspected the Afghans may have deliberately provided misleading information about their intentions in order to mask their route to Australia.

"We were informed that a boat was in trouble, but we don't know what sort of trouble," Eastern Fleet spokesman Toni Syaiful told AFP.

"We've been searching for it since yesterday and we haven't found it yet. So we can't say that the boat has sunk or that we've located it. The search will continue."

Police rescue team leader Victor Jemadu said the search was focused on waters off Komodo and Bubu Bahayo islands.

"We suspect that the migrants gave misleading information in order to divert our attention. The police were looking for them off Komodo island while they used another route to reach Australia," he said.

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith confirmed that Australian Federal Police had informed Indonesian authorities about a migrant boat in trouble, but backtracked on earlier remarks that it had been found with all passengers safe.

He said assurances from Indonesian officials Wednesday that they had found the vessel and it had not sunk as initially feared were incorrect.

"Indonesian officials advised the Australian embassy in Jakarta that they were unable to confirm the information provided yesterday regarding the location of the vessel and its passengers, and that at least some of the information may have been relayed in error," Smith said in a statement.

"Australian officials in Jakarta today have been urgently seeking to clarify information regarding the whereabouts of the vessel and the safety of the people on board."

Smith earlier said that Australian police had told the Indonesians that the boat sank late Tuesday off Komodo island, a nature reserve for Komodo dragon reptiles to the west of Flores island.

Australia is ready to help Indonesian authorities find the Afghans, he added.

A port official in Flores said the boat went missing in Sape Strait between Flores and Komodo islands, a deep, narrow channel known for strong currents.

A group of European scuba divers went missing there last year before being found on nearby Rinca island, which is also a reserve for komodo dragons. They were carried away from their boat and drifted for about eight hours.

Indonesia is a transit route for migrants from the Middle East and Asia seeking to travel to Australia in rickety boats with the help of people smugglers.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is accused by the opposition of encouraging illegal immigrants by relaxing the hardline immigration policy of his conservative predecessor, John Howard.

Rudd this week visited Malaysia to urge officials there to crack down on human-trafficking following a sharp rise in arrivals in Australia -- 825 already this year, compared to just 179 for the whole of 2008.

Australian police also work with their Indonesian counterparts to try to stop the flow of illegal immigrants.

Sink migrant boats
10 July 2009
Daily Telegraph

LONDON: The far-right British National Party leader -- recently elected to the European Parliament amid uproar from protesters -- yesterday sparked fresh controversy by saying Europe should sink boats carrying African immigrants.

Nick Griffin said that those on board would be thrown a life raft but insisted only drastic action could stop Europe being ``swamped by the Third World''.

``The only measure ... to stop large numbers of sub-Saharan Africans dying on the way to get over here is to get very tough with those coming over,'' he said.

Afghans, Pakistanis migrants held in raid: Malaysian police
29 June 2009
Agence France Presse

Malaysian authorities arrested 36 Afghans and six Pakistanis after detaining two boats trying to smuggle them to Australia via Indonesia, a top marine police official said Monday.

Marzuki Ismail, central Selangor state's marine police chief, told AFP that authorities Saturday also arrested 14 Indonesians, including three boat operators, involved in smuggling migrants.

"We first detained a small wooden boat around midnight near Port Klang (west of the capital Kuala Lumpur) with 15 Afghans and six Pakistanis in it.

"Upon investigation we secured information that there was a mother ship that was waiting nearby," Marzuki said.

"The next morning (Sunday), we successfully tracked down the mother ship and arrested 21 Afghans," he added.

Marzuki said that with the latest arrests, a total of 93 migrants had been nabbed since January for attempting to sail to Australia via neighbouring Indonesia by crossing the treacherous Malacca Strait.

Just two weeks ago, Malaysian police detained a boat that was also trying to smuggle 17 Iraqis to Australia via Indonesia. Seven Indonesians were arrested in that raid.

Marzuki said the 42 arrested Afghans and Pakistanis had paid 1,300 dollars each to get to Indonesia, adding that a criminal syndicate operated by Malaysians and Indonesians could be behind the incident.

The Afghans and Pakistanis will be charged with trying to leave the country illegally, he said.

Human trafficking and drug smuggling have replaced piracy as the main crime threat off Malaysia's long coastline, and Prime Minister Najib Razak admitted that his country was being used as a transit point for illegal immigrants.

In an annual report released on June 16 the United States re-entered Malaysia on a human-trafficking blacklist, saying it had failed to comply with minimum standards to eliminate trafficking.

18 dead, 29 missing after boat capsizes in Gulf of Aden: UN
18 June 2009
Agence France Presse

Eighteen people died and 29 were missing after a boat transporting illegal migrants capsized in the Gulf of Aden, the UN refugee agency said on Thursday.

"Eighteen people drowned and another 29 are missing and presumed dead after a smuggling boat capsized in the Gulf of Aden due to strong winds and rough seas this week off the coast of Yemen," the agency said in a statement.

The incident occurred on Monday and the boat was believed to have been carrying 88 people in total, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said.

"Some 24 African nationals made it to the shore aboard a smaller skiff which was towed behind a bigger boat," according to the statement.

Four survivors were found ashore in the Yemen town of Bourom, some 500 kilometres (370 miles) east of Aden, it said, while two others were located alive on the outskirts of Mukalla.

The second group said they had walked towards Mukalla along with another 11 Somali survivors who have not yet been found, the UNHCR said.

"More bodies are expected to be washed ashore as the likelihood of finding others alive dims due to seasonal high waves throughout the Gulf of Aden from June to September," it said.

According to the agency, more than 522 boats and 25,764 people have arrived in Yemen this year after making the perilous voyage across the Gulf of Aden from the Horn of Africa.

It said 146 people were believed to have drowned and 85 were missing at sea.

"Those who make the crossing are fleeing desperate situations of civil war, political instability, poverty and famine in Somalia and the Horn of Africa," it said.

2nd Haitian man charged in doomed migrant smuggling trip that killed 9 people off Fla. coast
9 June 2009

MIAMI (AP) - A second Haitian man faces alien smuggling charges as an alleged organizer and pilot of a voyage that ended with nine people dead when their boat capsized off Florida's coast last month.

A criminal complaint filed in federal court charges 32-year-old Jean Morange Nelson with alien smuggling resulting in a person's death, which carries a potential death sentence. Nelson made an initial court appearance Tuesday in West Palm Beach but did not enter a plea. His lawyer, David Joffe, said he had just been appointed in the case.

"I will do everything possible to defend this guy," Joffe said.

Nelson was among the 16 people rescued when the boat capsized May 13, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. He was identified as one of the smugglers by another survivor and by the other man charged in the case, 33-year-old Jimmy Metellus.

According to an ICE affidavit, Metellus told agents that Nelson arranged for him to fly from Port de Paix, Haiti, to the Bahamas to take part in the smuggling venture. Metellus said that he, Nelson and two other smugglers used a 30-foot white boat with two inboard engines and a cabin in the front for the roughly 21 migrants being transported.

The boat left Nassau, Bahamas on May 9 but soon encountered engine problems, drifting for three days. Nelson worked on the engines and was able to get one working. After a small plane flew overhead, a boat appeared carrying fuel and the smuggling vessel continued on to Bimini with Nelson, Metellus and the others taking turns driving.

When the boat neared Bimini, the ICE affidavit says that Nelson got a call on his cell phone from another smuggler known as "Shine" to make arrangements for an overnight stay at a house on the island. After that stay, the migrants were again loaded on the boat at night and taken by Nelson and then Metellus toward the U.S. coast some 50 miles away.

The unnamed survivor who identified Metellus and Nelson as smugglers said his family paid $4,000 for the trip.

Metellus, a Haitian who is also a permanent legal U.S. resident, has not yet entered a plea in the case but is cooperating with investigators, according to the ICE affidavit. Nelson's arraignment is scheduled for June 24 in West Palm Beach federal court.

Also Tuesday, prosecutors said a boat survivor from Jamaica, Harold Anglin, has been charged with attempting to illegally re-enter the U.S. after deportation. That charge carries a potential 10-year prison sentence.

In a separate smuggling case, federal prosecutors said Tuesday that 28-year-old Jovel Dominguez-Hernandez was sentenced to three years in prison for being captain of a boat that ran aground Jan. 26 near Boynton Beach Inlet. Dominguez-Hernandez, of Hialeah, pleaded guilty to smuggling seven Haitians and one man from Sierra Leone to the U.S. for $3,000.

Indonesia find 15 Afghan migrants: police
11 July 2009
Agence France Presse

Indonesia has found 15 of the 74 Afghan migrants who went missing in treacherous waters en route to Australia, police said Saturday.

The asylum seekers, who have been missing since Wednesday, are being held by police on Sumbawa island, Bima city police chief Tjatur Abrianto said.

"We found them yesterday afternoon at the seaport and terminal," Abrianto said. "They didn't try to fight us or run away.

"We're still looking for the others who may still be at the sea or on land."

He said that the migrants' boat had been damaged and they had reached the coast through the help of local fishermen.

"For the next step, the IOM (International Organisation for Migration) will take care of them," he added.

The Indonesian navy had been searching for the boat after being told it had gone missing by Australian police.

"We were informed that a boat was in trouble, but we don't know what sort of trouble," Eastern Fleet spokesman Toni Syaiful told AFP on Thursday.

"We've been searching for it since yesterday and we haven't found it yet. So we can't say that the boat has sunk or that we've located it. The search will continue."

Police rescue team leader Victor Jemadu said Thursday the search was focused on waters off Komodo and Bubu Bahayo islands.

A group of European scuba divers went missing in the area last year before being found on nearby Rinca island, a reserve for komodo dragons reptiles. They were carried away from their boat and drifted for about eight hours.

Indonesia is a transit route for migrants from the Middle East and Asia seeking to travel to Australia in rickety boats with the help of people smugglers.

Australian police also work with their Indonesian counterparts to try to stop the flow of illegal immigrants.

`Lost' boatpeople thought safe
11 July 2009
The Australian

AFGHAN asylum-seekers thought to have been lost at sea are likely to be hiding from Indonesian police on a remote island, the Australian man who alerted authorities to their plight believes.

Australian refugee advocate Ian Rintoul said yesterday that, despite having had no news of the occupants for more than 24 hours, he was ``relatively convinced'' they were safe.

Indonesian authorities abandoned their search for the up to 74 Afghans and several local crew on Thursday, after finding no trace of their boat across a wide area of sea and coastline near Flores island.

The alarm was first raised on Tuesday when Mr Rintoul received an SMS from Pakistan alerting him to the fact that a small boat was sinking.

It was the first in a chain of text messages, climaxing with one sent by Australian Federal Police in Jakarta to their eastern Indonesian counterparts, alerting them to the possible disaster.

Because of a profoundly underfunctioning telephone system, Indonesians manage all kinds of business by SMS, so it was no surprise the alert should be raised in this fashion.

Mr Rintoul had contacted the boat's occupants and received text messages from them. He said yesterday they had probably been unable to charge phones or were trying to avoid authorities.

``It could also be that they're fine, maybe somewhere where they're trying to get their motor fixed without anyone knowing about them,'' he said.

Indonesian authorities abandoned their search for the boatpeople on Thursday, saying they were no longer treating it as an emergency but as a routine immigration matter.

Police said yesterday the asylum-seekers had still not been found.

An Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman, Teuku Faizasyah, raised hopes yesterday that they had been found near Komodo island, home of the fierce giant lizards of the same name.

``(But) we can't get further confirmation because the area is so isolated,'' he said.

Mr Faizasyah's claims were quickly rebutted by senior Indonesian police and rescue agency commanders.

``I've confirmed this with my superiors: we have not found them,'' Water Safety Board officer Nara Nazimuddin said.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith sparked confusion on Wednesday night by claiming the group had been saved, before admitting the next day he was wrong and blaming the gaffe

on misinformation from the Indonesians.

There are up to 1500 registered asylum-seekers in Indonesia, and probably as many again not registered with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

A large group was rescued last month after a boat sank in waters near where this week's craft is thought to have gone missing.

Two African migrants die trying to reach Spain's Canary Islands
13 July 2009
Agence France Presse

Two African migrants have died trying to reach Spain's Canary Islands on a wooden fishing boat that was carrying 68 people in total, a local government spokesman said Monday.

The 12-metre-long (36-foot-long) boat was carrying the body of one man who is believed to have died on the voyage when it was spotted late Sunday close to La Estaca on El Hierro, the smallest of the Spanish islands, he said.

Five passengers who were suffering from hypothermia and dehydration were taken to hospital, including one who later died, he added.

Hundreds of mainly African migrants trying to get to Europe die each year attempting to reach Spain in wooden fishing boats.

In February, 25 people, including 19 minors, died after their boat sank off the Canary Islands located just off Morocco's coast.

A record 31,678 people arrived in the Canary Islands in 2006 by boat, compared to just 1,318 during the first half of this year.

The Spanish government credits the decline on increased maritime surveillance and agreements with several African nations that allows it to send migrants back.

Asylum-seekers promised 'a big ship'
14 July 2009
The Australian

THE Afghan asylum-seekers whose boat foundered in eastern Indonesia last week were told by people-smugglers they would be travelling to Australia on a ``big ship'' with their passports.

In a revealing insight into the way smugglers do business, Hussain Ali, 24, told The Australian the Afghan who organised his passage to Australia disappeared as he and his fellow Hazaras were due to board the ill-fated vessel.

The news came as investigators in Indonesia said the bulk of the up to 85 Afghan asylum-seekers aboard the boat had probably filtered back to Jakarta, where it is feared they will try to launch a second attempt to reach Australia.

Mr Ali said yesterday he had paid $US8000 ($10,300) for his trip to Australia, which began with a meeting with an ``agent'', or people-smuggler, in Kabul more than two months ago.

``He says, `we take you to Australia by the passport, by the plane, by the big ship','' Mr Ali said. ``When we arrived in Jakarta they put us in the small ship.'' Mr Ali said he and his fellow passengers, some of whom had travelled via Kuala Lumpur from refugee camps in Pakistan, were angry.

He said he tried to contact the agent, but his phone was off.

``We angry, we were angry,'' Mr Ali said. ``So what should (we) do? We are illegal. His mobile was off.'' Only 29 of the group are in custody on the eastern island of Sumbawa. One member of that small group, Ali Yewar, alias Juma Khan, fled soon after speaking to The Australian on the weekend. According to the owner of the lodgings where police have temporarily housed the asylum-seekers, Mr Yewar's absence was discovered on Sunday when dinner was being distributed.

Another of the group, Afghan teenager Mustafa Ismael, told The Australian yesterday he had taken a 24-hour bus journey nearly two weeks ago from Jakarta to the boat's launching point, the industrial port of Surabaya, in east Java.

``I was about one month and a half in Indonesia before I left Jakarta, and then after the bus ride, we were three days to travel by sea,'' the 15-year-old said.

The overloaded boat's engine gave out last Tuesday night near Komodo island, in eastern Indonesia. However, it appears either crew members or someone among the Afghans was able to nurse the engine for another 24 to 48 hours and get the craft near a small port in the southwest of Sumbawa island.

``All the people who understand swimming, they went swimming (to land),'' Mustafa said. ``The captain just helped his brother and the other crew, but we had to leave the boat by ourselves.''

Indonesian police believe the group was helped to shore by local fishermen in small groups. Police subsequently arrested several of them on buses heading for Jakarta or at a bus terminal. However, many more got away.

Those who have been apprehended are being dealt with by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organisation for Migration, the organisations that manage refugee claims in Indonesia, which does not recognise international conventions on refugees.

Yesterday, four Indonesian men accused of crewing another asylum-seeker boat that was carrying 74 passengers and was intercepted by Australian authorities on May 24 appeared before a Perth court.

Third African dies from Canary Islands crossing
14 July 2009
Agence France Presse

A third African died Tuesday from hypothermia and dehydration because of a treacherous crossing by would-be immigrants to Spain's Canary Islands in a wooden boat, the Spanish government said.

He was one of five men taken to hospital for treatment after they arrived on El Hierro, the smallest of the Canary Islands, late on Sunday on a boat carrying 68 immigrants.

A second man died in hospital on Monday while a third was found dead on the 12-metre (40-foot) long boat at the end of the voyage.

Hundreds of mainly African migrants die each year attempting to reach Spain in wooden fishing boats so they can begin new lives in Europe.

In February, 25 people -- 19 of them children -- died after their boat sank off the Canary Islands, which are located just a few hundred kilometres (miles) off the western coast of Morocco.

A record 31,678 would-be immigrants arrived in the Canary Islands in 2006, compared to just 1,318 during the first half of this year.

The Spanish government credits the decline on increased maritime surveillance and agreements with several African nations that allow it to send people back.

Asylum seeker says AFP `left us adrift'
13 July 2009
The Australian

AN Afghan asylum-seeker arrested after several days lost at sea claims Australian Federal Police told him a helicopter and boats would be sent to rescue him and up to 85 others.

Ali Yewar, 28, a passenger on an asylum-seeker vessel that was bound for Australia and feared lost in Indonesian waters, told The Australian yesterday he called the AFP and gave readings from an onboard GPS device to pinpoint the location of the group's boat as it foundered off the eastern Indonesian island of Flores.

Mr Yewar, also known as Juma Khan, said no help had arrived.

``For four nights we drifted but no one came to help us as they promised,'' he said. ``I spoke to Australian, to Indonesians, but no one came. Our boat was being pushed around in the heavy wind, our engine was seized and the boat was full of water.''

Mr Yewar was aboard an asylum-seeker vessel that has perplexed and confused Australian and Indonesian authorities since it was first reported missing.

It was initially thought lost at sea last Tuesday, then prematurely reported as found by Foreign Minister Stephen Smith late on Wednesday. Over the weekend, some of the boat's Afghan passengers were arrested by Indonesian authorities on Sumbawa island and an empty boat was found near the island town of Bima.

Mr Smith said yesterday the passengers were safe but not all accounted for. ``Our most recent advice from Indonesian officials is that the vessel has been located and the passengers dispersed,'' he said.

``Embassy officials, AFP officers in our office in Jakarta, have spoken to two of the passengers who were on board and the telephone advice from the passengers to the AFP officers is that all of the passengers on board are safe -- that's the most recent advice I have.

``They've dispersed, so not all passengers are accounted for, but the advice that we have from two passengers is that all the passengers were safe prior to their dispersal.''

However, Mr Yewar said he feared his cousin was among a group of asylum-seekers from the boat who may have drowned.

Mr Smith's announcement came as another suspected asylum-seeker vessel arrived at Christmas Island. The wooden boat, with its cargo of 73 passengers and crew, was the 17th vessel to arrive this year. More than 900 undocumented migrants and 35 crew have been intercepted in Australian waters this year.

The ship was intercepted 80 nautical miles off Christmas Island by the Royal Australian Navy patrol boat Armidale.

The passengers were yesterday being processed for identity, health and security checks before joining hundreds of others on the island's immigration detention centre, which is close to capacity.

Authorities have not said where the suspected asylum-seekers had travelled from.

Mr Yewar, who was yesterday being held on Sumbawa, said that after the boat he was travelling in started drifting, he raised the alarm. This included, he said, calling Jakarta-based AFP officers, who alerted their Indonesian counterparts to the group's plight.

Mr Yewar had also sent an SOS text message to contacts in Pakistan, who relayed it to Australian refugee advocate Ian Rintoul. Mr Rintoul called Australian authorities to ensure they knew of the group's predicament.

``The Australian police asked me if the boat had a GPS,'' Mr Yewar said. ``I didn't know what a GPS was, but I asked the captain and he said, `it's this'. I told the police the reading on it.''

The Indonesian authorities were given those coordinates by the AFP in an SMS that was subsequently distributed widely through various agencies, but they were unable to locate the boat.

An AFP spokesman refused to confirm whether it had received a call from anyone on the boat. Nor would it confirm or deny whether any of its officers spoke to people on the boat. The spokesman also refused to detail whether information was passed on to the Indonesian police.

Mr Yewar said the crew eventually dropped the asylum-seekers on an unknown island and left.

He admitted the group's intention had been to sail to Australia where members would seek asylum, ``because of course I like Australia and I want to be in Australia, and I promise that, whether it is illegally or legally, I will keep trying to do that''.

Mr Yewar, who is from Kabul, refused to say where the boat's voyage had begun or to give any details of the people-smuggling agents he had used to make the journey.

At least 29 of the original members of that group are now in detention on Sumbawa, an island to the east of Bali and a common staging point for boat journeys to Australia.

Mr Yewar said he was worried that up to 30 more of the group had gone missing.

He said he had no idea whether that was because they had gone overboard while the boat was battling heavy seas off Flores where it first ran into trouble, or whether it was because they had disappeared after being dropped on the unnamed island.

Indonesian police said local fishermen had transported the asylum-seekers to the town of Bima, on Sumbawa, where they were eventually arrested.

Some were seized at a bus terminal, apparently preparing to head west back to Jakarta through a series of island-hopping connections. Others, including Mr Yewar, were found in a local village.

Mr Yewar said he had applied in Jakarta three months ago for refugee status through the UN High Commissioner for Refugees -- an increasingly common way for people fleeing war and persecution in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sri Lanka and elsewhere to speed up their formal resettlement in countries such as Australia.

Many refugees use the resultant informal Indonesian visa to arrange the dangerous journey by sea to Australia, where they hope their resettlement attempts will be dealt with even faster.

Responding to the arrival of the lastest asylum-seeker vessel at Christmas Island, the Rudd government said the upsurge in asylum-seeker arrivals was part of a global phenomenon linked to instability and war in countries such as Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and more recently Sri Lanka.

``The boat was detected before it reached the contigious zone and our migration zone and was kept under constant surveillance,'' Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor said in a statement on the weekend.

``This demonstrates that our system of border protection is strong and effective.

``The group will be transferred to Christmas Island where they will undergo security, identity and health checks to establish their identity and reasons for travel.''

The latest boatload of arrivals brings the total number of people detained on Christmas Island to 725.

THE NUMBERS

Asylum-seeker surge continues unabated

* 904 Asylum-seeker arrivals since January 1. This includes the 73 passengers on board the vessel now docked at Christmas Island

* 17 The number of boats intercepted this year

* 35+ The number of foreign crew in detention

* 59 The number of passengers missing after their boat sank off the eastern island of Sumbawa last week. However, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith says unconfirmed reports coming from the Australian Federal Police in Jakarta state that they are all safe

Migrant dies in sea crossing
25 July 2009
Agence France Presse

A migrant travelling by sea from Libya to Malta died during the sea journey, authorities said Saturday.

A group of 44 migrants who arrived early Saturday told authorities one person died during the sea crossing and their body was thrown overboard, a spokesman for the Maltese Armed Forces told AFP, without giving further details.

The migrants, using a 30-foot (nine-metre) long rubber dinghy landed at the southernmost Maltese village of Marsascala. They said they were Somalis and that they had been at sea for four days.

Asylum-seekers' boats `in distress'
28 July 2009
The Australian

TWO boats thought to contain asylum-seekers are reportedly ``in distress'' off the Indonesian territory of Aceh.

Sources have told The Australian the boats are believed to be floundering somewhere off the vast Sumatran coastline.

The Australian government confirmed it was aware of reports of two vessels in trouble, but would not say where the boats were located.

``We've received reports of two vessels reported to be in distress in Indonesian waters,'' a spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection Command told The Australian.

``We've passed the information on to our Indonesian counterparts.''

It is understood officials in Canberra were notified of the incident at least as early as Friday evening, Australian time.

The condition of the boats is not known, nor is it clear what the source of the problem is.

Authorities would not say how many passengers are believed to be on board.

Customs would not say yesterday if the boat contained Australia-bound asylum-seekers. However, the location of the vessels and the fact that the tip-off appeared to have come from Australian authorities strongly suggests they were headed to Australia.

The northern tip of the Malay-Indonesian archipelago is an emerging centre of people smuggling activity.

The single largest boat to arrive amid the present influx -- a vessel carrying 194 Tamil asylum-seekers -- is thought to have tracked a similar route to Australia, with authorities tracing the boat's course at least as far north as Penang in northern Malaysia.

Customs said yesterday that both the Australian embassy and the Australian Maritime Safety Authority had relayed details of the boats' plight to their Indonesian counterparts.

``Australian Embassy officials continue to liaise with their Indonesian counterparts to confirm what's happening,'' the spokeswoman said. She would not say if the boats had been rescued or if Indonesian authorities had located them.

Friday's incident calls to mind the sinking of an Australia-bound boat off Flores Island in Indonesia earlier this month. News of the sinking was conveyed to authorities in Canberra after passengers aboard the boat made contact with Australian refugee advocate, Ian Rintoul.

Mr Rintoul told Customs and Border Protection Command who are understood to have alerted Australian Federal Police based in Indonesia. The AFP then conveyed the news to their local counterparts via text message. All 74 passengers aboard the boat are understood to have made it to land safely, with some in Indonesian custody.

Nine dead, 70 missing in Haitian boat capsize
28 July 2009
Agence France Presse

Authorities were searching for at least 70 Haitian migrants off the Turks and Caicos Islands Tuesday, after their overloaded boat capsized, killing at least nine, but were not hopeful survivors would be found.

Local police renewed their search at dawn for the dozens of illegal migrants still unaccounted for in shark-infested waters after their rickety boat struck a reef.

Marine officers, assisted by the US Coast Guard, have so far rescued 118 passengers -- 15 of them on the nearby island of West Caicos -- after they managed to swim ashore.

"We were back out today at first light, combing the area trying to find any more survivors, but we are not hopeful," said Neil Hall, head of the islands' marine police.

"It will probably be just a case of picking up more dead bodies. The survivors are in pretty bad shape; worn out, dehydrated and confused."

Local police said ten bodies had been recovered and 70 people were unaccounted for, while the US Coast Guard put the death toll at nine and said 79 migrants were still missing.

As many as 200 people are believed to have been on board the wooden sailboat, which was likely headed for the Bahamas or the southeastern coast of the United States.

Based on statements from survivors, the overloaded vessel left Haiti with about 160 people aboard and then stopped along the way, picking up additional people.

The boat capsized and sank about 2.3 miles (3.7 kilometers) southeast of West Caicos.

"I had been fearing for a long time that one of these boats was going to go off course, and now it's happened," Hall said.

"The problem with these sloops is we have no idea how many were on board, so we don't know how many we are looking for or how many we can expect to find."

Police were only alerted to the disaster after five migrants were picked up by security staff on the private island. They used small boats to rescue the stranded migrants, with the US Coast Guard assisting in the search and airlifting the injured to a hospital on shore.

"These boats are sail freighters. They don't have an engine, they have a makeshift sail, so wherever the boat takes them, they go," Petty Officer First Class Jennifer Johnson, a Coast Guard spokeswoman in Miami, told AFP.

She said the coast guard's "primary concern" was locating the missing, getting them to safety and making sure they receive any needed medical care.

US officials said an HH-65 helicopter from Air Station Miami and a C-130 military transport were at the accident scene and searching for survivors and that the coast guard cutter Valiant was also participating in the search.

Migrants from Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, often undertake perilous journeys aboard precarious and often overcrowded boats headed for the Caribbean or the United States.

In May 2007, more than 60 migrants were killed when their vessel capsized off the Turks and Caicos Islands in the worst disaster to affect the islands in recent history.

A British-dependent island chain, the Turks and Caicos Islands are located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Haiti.

Search ends for shipwrecked Haiti migrants
30 July 2009
Agence France Presse

The US Coast Guard has called off its search for nearly 70 Haitian migrants who remained missing Thursday after their boat capsized off the Turks and Caicos Islands.

After two days of scouring the area via ship and aircraft, the Coast Guard ended its search late Wednesday for the Haitians, who officials said likely perished in the area's shark-infested waters after their overcrowded boat hit a reef over the weekend.

"Of the estimated 200 Haitians aboard the vessel, 118 were safely transported to shore and 15 were recovered deceased," the Coast Guard said in a statement.

Up to 200 illegal migrants desperate to flee their impoverished Haitian homeland are believed to have crammed onto the wooden sail boat which originated in the northern city of Cap-Haitien.

They appeared to have been bound for the Bahamas or the southeastern coast of the United States when the sloop struck a reef, shattered and sank late Sunday.

Of those rescued, many of the survivors were treated for bruises and dehydration. Some of the survivors made it to the shores of West Caicos island, where many were found clinging to the sharp reefs surrounding the islands.

The Miami Herald newspaper reported that as of Wednesday, authorities on the Turks and Caicos had repatriated about 60 of the travelers to Haiti.

Turks and Caicos officials have contacted the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner's office for help with autopsies on the recovered bodies.

As early as Monday, local authorities had offered a grim prognosis about the chances of finding more survivors.

"It will probably be just a case of picking up more dead bodies. The survivors are in pretty bad shape; worn out, dehydrated and confused," Neil Hall, head of the islands' marine police said.

Based on statements from survivors, the overloaded, rickety vessel left Haiti with about 160 people aboard and then stopped along the way, picking up more passengers. The boat capsized and sank about 2.3 miles (3.7 kilometers) southeast of West Caicos.

"Tragic events of this sort underline the importance of using safe, legal and orderly methods of travel and migration," Governor Gordon Wetherell of the Turks and Caicos Islands said in a statement issued Tuesday.

Meanwhile the island's premier, Galmo Williams, vowed that "any individuals found to be a part of this smuggling operation will be brought to justice."

Police were only alerted to the disaster after five migrants were picked up by security staff on the private island Monday afternoon. They used small boats to rescue the stranded migrants, with the US Coast Guard assisting in the search and airlifting the injured to a hospital on shore.

Migrants from Haiti often undertake perilous journeys aboard precarious and often overcrowded boats headed for the Caribbean or the United States.

In May 2007, more than 60 migrants were killed when their vessel capsized off Turks and Caicos in the worst disaster to affect the islands in recent history.

A British-dependent island chain, Turks and Caicos are located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Haiti.

2 snakeheads and 9 illegal immigrants caught in sea chase
24 July 2009
SCMP

Two people smugglers from the mainland and nine illegal immigrants from Bangladesh have been arrested after their speedboat was intercepted by police in a high-speed chase off Sai Kung.

It was the second arrest of suspected human traffickers in a week and came amid a surge in illegal immigration following a landmark court case - fuelled, police said, by snakeheads spreading rumours that illegal immigrants would be offered asylum during their detention.

The nine Bangladeshis, all men, told police they were seeking asylum in Hong Kong.

Three had leg injuries and another fainted from lack of food when police arrested them on the speedboat at 9.45pm on Wednesday. They were sent to hospital.

The seven metre speedboat was seen heading towards Tai Long Wan in Sai Kung Country Park at about 9.35pm during an operation against illegal immigrants by the marine police small boat division.

After a short pursuit, the speedboat was intercepted off Tai Long Tsui at 9.45pm.

Two suspected snakeheads from Huidong , Guangdong, aged 22 and 37, were arrested.

The 11 were being held for questioning in Tai Po police station. Detectives from the marine police regional crime unit are investigating.

Last Friday, two mainland men suspected of smuggling nine Pakistanis into Hong Kong were arrested after a chase off the Ninepin Islands.

Twelve illegal immigrants from Pakistan and Nepal were also caught off Sai Kung Country Park at about 7.30am on Wednesday.

About 530 illegal immigrants from South Asia were arrested between March and June, compared with 32 in January, 41 in February and 964 in the whole of last year.

The sharp rise in interceptions came after a March court ruling in which Pakistani asylum seekers prosecuted for taking work in Mong Kok were found to be not in breach of immigration laws.

"Snakeheads on the mainland may have been spreading rumours that non-Chinese illegal immigrants will be offered asylum during their detention," Senior Inspector Yip Kwong-choi said.

Snakeheads usually charged each illegal immigrant from HK$8,000 to HK$12,000 for a journey from the mainland to Hong Kong, he said.

The Immigration Department received 1,534 cases in the first six months this year claiming protection under the United Nations Convention against Torture.

More than 100 boat people rescued off Malta
16 August 2009
Agence France Presse

The Maltese army rescued 115 people from a sinking dinghy overnight south of the Mediterranean island nation, a spokesman said Sunday.

Their drifting vessel was first reported by a fisherman some 20 nautical miles south of Malta, the spokesman told AFP.

Three army patrol boats sailed to the area to rescue the 81 men and 34 women, who were brought to Malta early Sunday.

They said they were from Somalia and had set sail from Libya, the spokesman said.

The arrival was the first of African migrants to Malta in three weeks after a sudden decline in human trafficking in the region.

Last week the Italian navy intercepted a boat carrying 84 migrants some 90 miles off Malta and returned them to Libya, with the exception of a baby girl born on the boat who was airlifted with her mother to Malta.

Rome and Tripoli recently implemented a controversial new policy which allows the Italian navy to intercept illegal migrants at sea and return them to Libya.

Libya is a major transit country for people from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan seeking to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.

Search in Mediterranean for 73 migrants feared dead
21 August 2009
Agence France Presse

Italian coastguards searched the Mediterranean Sea on Friday for the bodies of 73 migrants from Eritrea feared dead from hunger and thirst while trying to reach Europe from North Africa.

They began looking for the missing after five other migrants -- rescued the day before off Lampedusa island -- said they had perished during the voyage and that their bodies had been dumped at sea.

"Searches are under way, but for the moment we have recovered no bodies," an official with the customs coastguard service in Lampedusa told AFP.

The emaciated survivors said their small 12-metre (40-foot) boat -- which set off from Libya -- had been adrift without fuel for 20 days, and that they received no help from several passing vessels.

"As if fear were more important than the duty to help others at sea," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees spokeswoman Laura Boldrini, describing the reported failure to help as "alarming".

But the Maltese authorities have cast doubt on the migrants' story.

A spokesman for the Maltese armed forces told AFP Friday that the migrants had not been in a state of distress when they were approached by a Maltese p