UN orders search for possible slave ship to continue

Children taken from a ferry are resting while authorities try to determine if it is the vessel that sparked a hunt for a suspected child-slave ship in Africa's Gulf of Guinea.

UN officials have ordered its offices along West Africa's coast to stay alert for the possibility that the slave ship they had been seeking might yet dock somewhere.

The children from the passenger ferry were fed and are being allowed to recuperate at a home for children in Cotonou, before being interviewed by police.

The mystery is whether the ferry that arrived overnight was indeed the suspected slave ship, or whether another might still be at sea.

"'We have asked our offices in Malabo and elsewhere in the region to remain vigilant and not to demobilise," said Zachary Adams, UNICEF official in Cotonou, Benin's commercial capital. Malabo is the capital of nearby Equatorial Guinea.

"A boat has arrived here in Cotonou and we have no details of another, but we have to be prepared for the possibility."

After days of searching, a 200-foot-long ferry marked with the name MV Etireno pulled into Cotonou port before a hastily summoned crowd of Cabinet ministers, soldiers, police, journalists and UN employees.

Contrary to earlier reports that the Nigerian-registered ship being sought was a rusting and decrepit hulk, the Etireno appeared to be newly painted, with the signs of another name, "NORDBY," still visible underneath. The ship's captain said the name was changed in 1999 but admitted he didn't have documents to prove it.

"I don't know what to think," said Nicolas Pron, a senior official with the UN children's fund in Benin. "My main concern is that the kids are here and safe, and we will hear if that is the case."

Exhausted and frightened passengers - women, children and a few men - were taken from the ferry to be questioned later by officials. The anxious wait for the MV Etireno started amid reports that a boat crowded with children sold into slavery was roaming somewhere in the Gulf of Guinea.