Immigrants who broke into Spain deported

DOZENS of African illegal immigrants who charged across the border into the Spanish enclave of Melilla have been deported to Morocco after a week of deadly clashes, officials said yesterday.

The 73 men from Mali were handcuffed and flown on Thursday evening from Melilla to Algeciras, on the Spanish mainland, where they were they put aboard a ferry bound for the Moroccan city of Tangiers, a police spokesman in Algeciras said.

There were no plans for more deportations yesterday, he said.

They were the first group of immigrants to be expelled after Spanish authorities announced on Wednesday that they would send back Africans who made it from Morocco to Melilla, located on Morocco’s northern coast.

Morocco has promised shelter, medical care and humane treatment for deported immigrants, the official MAP news agency reported yesterday, citing the Interior Ministry.

However, the humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontiers (MSF), or Doctors without Borders, reported that at least 400 Africans captured by the Moroccan army at forests near the Melilla border have been taken to a desert without any assistance, water or food.

“The immigrants have been forsaken by the world, abandoned in the middle of the desert,” said Carlos Ugarte, a Madrid member of the organisation.

He said pregnant women and children were among the 400. He said the desert was in the east of Morocco, near the Algerian border, and MSF was trying to evacuate three who are seriously injured.

“Morocco is deporting those immigrants to places where their lives are seriously in danger,” he said, adding that Spain should take into consideration that the immigrants are being treated this way if they plan to continue the expulsions.

For the past week, increasing waves of men from impoverished sub-Saharan African nations, seeking entry in Europe, have charged guard posts along the borders separating the centuries-old Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta from Morocco.

Six men died on Thursday during a violent assault by 400 immigrants trying to enter Melilla.

Moroccan police opened fire as the illegal immigrants rushed the post, killing several of them, a government official in Rabat said.

Others among the six dead suffocated and were trampled, said the official.

Last week, five people died of gunshot wounds when some 600 Africans tried to climb fences and reach the other enclave, Ceuta.