MADRID, Sept 20: 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 on 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 trafficking 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.—AFP
