British Navy urged to aid hunt for child slave ship

Britain's Royal Navy has been urged to join the hunt for a ship carrying child slaves which has disappeared off the coast of west Africa.

Fears are growing for the safety of the 250 children thought to be on board after their decrepit vessel was refused entry to two African ports.

The vessel, the MV Etirino, has not been seen since.

The tiny Republic of Benin, where the slave children originate from, has appealed to the United Nations and Western powers to join the search for the Nigerian-registered vessel.

The United Nations children's agency Unicef said British help would be welcomed.

Esther Goluma, a Unicef official in Benin, said: "It would be helpful to have British ships and those of any other nation looking for it. If those children are still on that boat, conditions must be very bad. They may not have enough supplies. I'm just hoping they have secretly docked somewhere."

Britain's Shadow defence secretary Iain Duncan Smith said: "If there are British ships in the area, Navy commanders should be ordered to help search for the missing boat."

Benin's Social Protection Minister, Ramatou Baba Moussa, said: "We need top technology, we need satellites and fast ships to help us."

Britain's Foreign Office said their Government is studying the requests for help. But their Ministry of Defence has warned there are "no readily deployable assets" in the area.

With no ships currently moored off Sierra Leone - where British forces have been deployed - the nearest vessels are understood to be further north off the west African coast, about two days' sailing away.

The impoverished children were taken from families in Benin who were told they would be educated and found good jobs. Instead they were destined to be sold into slavery as unpaid domestic staff and plantation workers.

The ship set off from Benin some 10 days ago but was turned away from Gabon, a relatively prosperous country south east of Benin, where authorities believe it was originally intended to sell the children.

On Thursday, port officials in Douala, Cameroon, refused to allow the vessel into harbour for similar reasons, according to UN and Benin officials.

Aid workers have also expressed fears that the ship's captain, who has a criminal record in Nigeria and has in the past been accused of trafficking in child slaves, could dump his human cargo overboard.