Egypt arrests 55 African migrants

  1. Posted on Monday 25 October 2010 - 10:20
    Muhyadin
    Muhyadin Ahmed Roble, AfricaNews reporter in Nairobi, Kenya
    Fifty-five Sudanese migrants were detained by Egyptian security forces on Sunday while attempting to illegally cross the border from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula into Israel.
    SUDAN- Egypt asks sudan to unity ahead of referendum
    The migrants who were 40 men, nine women and six children were arrested when a truck they were hiding in was stopped at a checkpoint downtown.

    The truck driver told police that he had paid to take the group from Egypt’s southern border with Sudan to meet smugglers in the Sinai Peninsula.

    They were recovered in blankets in the back of the truck, which was stopped in a tunnel connecting Egypt’s mainland with the Sinai Peninsula. The migrants said to Police they had paid smugglers to help them enter Israel, where they hoped to find jobs.

    Thousands of African and other migrants have entered Israel through its porous border with Egypt over the last few years.

    Egyptian police arrested 10 Africans near the Israeli border on Saturday, on the same day that Israel handed over to the Egyptian authorities two Egyptians who had illegally crossed the border.

    Human rights organizations have often blasted Egypt for frequently shooting and killing migrants in order to prevent them from crossing the border. Egyptian border police killed nine African migrants in 2009.

    The Egypt-Israel border is 255 kilometre-long, which is guarded by 750 Egyptian policemen, as stipulated by the 1979 Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in January ordered the construction of a fence along two segments of the border, in an attempt to check the infiltration of migrant workers as well as of terrorist elements into Israel.

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