The bodies of 13 illegal immigrants, who drowned while attempting a clandestine trip across the Straits of Gibraltar to Spain, were washed up on a Moroccan beach yesterday, as the search began for 46 others believed to have died after their boat overturned.
Moroccan police and navy vessels were searching for survivors of what appeared to be the worst-ever tragedy involving the speedboats that in summer ferry hundreds of illegal immigrants daily across the Mediterranean from Moroccan beaches.
Moroccan state television broadcast pictures of the 13 bodies lined up on the beach, in what appeared to be the first official attempt to warn people of the danger of the illegal boat rides. The report said that those who died all came from a boat which set off from a beach near Kenitra, in north-western Morocco. It said only one of the 60 on board was known to have survived after the boat capsized in Moroccan waters.
The appearance of drowned immigrants on beaches in Spain and Morocco has become an increasingly frequent sight in recent years. More than 3,000 Moroccans and sub-Saharan Africans have died making the trip during the past decade.
About 10,000 illegal immigrants, two-thirds of them from Morocco, were caught in southern Spain and the Canary islands in the first five months of this year.