More Somali Migrants Arrested

(Maputo, Mozambique, December 09,  2010 Ceegaag Online)

The Mozambican police on Monday arrested 108 illegal migrants, all of them Somali citizens, in the central province of Zambezia, according to the spokesperson for the General Command of the police, Pedro Cossa.

Cossa told reporters on Tuesday that the Somalis were crammed into a truck traveling from the northern city of Nampula to Chimoio, capital of Manica province. The police stopped the truck at Chimuara, shortly before the bridge over the Zambezi river.

Cossa said the truck was accompanied by a light vehicle driven by a Kenyan, named only as Osman.

"The truck carrying these individuals only moved at night", added Cossa. "At dawn it would stop, and resume the journey at night, in an attempt to fool the police".

He assumed that the Somalis had entered Mozambique from Tanzania, with the assistance of Mozambican and Tanzanian fishermen who make additional money by ferrying illegal migrants across the Rovuma river which forms the frontier between the two countries.

There appears to be an organizing people-smuggling ring taking Somalis across Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique and then into South Africa, believed to be their final destination.

The police have had some success in disrupting this traffic. Thus in early November, the police seized 97 Somalis in Murrupula district, in Nampula, and on 22 November no less than 141 Somalis were arrested, again in Nampula. This group was traveling in two trucks, hidden under tarpaulins. Thus in three operations within a month, 346 Somali migrants have been detained.

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