ELEVEN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS DROWN

The Mozambican police confirmed on Tuesday the death of 11 illegal immigrants who drowned when they entered the country through the district of Palma, in the northern province of Cabo Delgado. According to the spokesperson for the General Command of the, Pedro Cossa, the incident occurred on 2 January, when a vessel of unknown origin dropped a number of people in deep water. “From this group of people, 11 - eight Ethiopians and three Somalis – died of drowning. They must have been unloaded into deep water”, said Cossa, speaking at his regular weekly briefing with reporters. Twelve Ethiopians also from the same group survived, and have been detained by the police. The information they gave provided the basis for police investigations. “When a team from the police and the maritime administration went to that place they only found 11 graves”, said Cossa. The police did not exhume any of the bodies of the drowned immigrants. Possibly other immigrants were also dropped by the boat, and managed to evade both death and the police. If so, their current whereabouts are unknown.Cabo Delgado is the main point of entry for illegal immigrants from the Horn of Africa, who have usually crossed Kenya and Tanzania before reaching Mozambican soil. Often they hire boats to take them to the northern Mozambican coast – occasionally with fatal resultsIn June last year, a vessel carrying 82 illegal Somali immigrants sank off the coast of the Cabo Delgado district of Mocimboa da Praia, killing at least nine people and possibly many more - 40 passengers who were aboard were listed as missing. Last November, police in Nampula province detained 141 illegal immigrants, all of them Somalis, who were in two trucks at night, hiding under tarpaulins. In December 140 illegal immigrants were detained in the Zambezia province - including Somalis, Pakistanis, Ethiopians, Congolese and Bengalis.It is thought that many of these immigrants have no intention of staying in Mozambique, but are simply using the country as a corridor for entering South Africa.