WORLD> Africa
Kenya seizes 65 illegal migrants from Ethiopia
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-10-15 15:43

NAIROBI -- Kenyan authorities are holding 65 Ethiopian illegal migrants who were arrested while heading to South Africa as part of a major smuggling operation.

The Daily Nation newspaper reported on Wednesday said migrants from southern Ethiopia were seized by police in a container on a Mombasa-bound truck on Monday evening.

One of the aliens said they paid 15.6 million shillings (about $205,000 dollars) to agents who promised to help them look for jobs in South Africa, via Kenya.

Each paid Ethiopian Birr 24,000, raising questions as to why people who could afford 240,000 shillings would be desperate for jobs in South Africa.

Their spokesperson Meskin Markos, 25, praised the police, saying "It was dark inside, with no ventilation and no space to move. We gasped for air, the weak ones fainted. It was then that we started knocking on the container to be freed. We were dying."

Police intercepted a truck carrying the young Ethiopians on their way from Nairobi to the port of Mombasa.

"They were packed in a 20-foot container on the truck when we stopped it at the Konza roadblock on the Nairobi-Mombasa highway," Machakos police boss Patrick Lumumba said.

The police took 33 to a Machakos court in eastern Kenya and pleaded guilty to being in Kenya illegally. They appeared before the principal magistrate Julie Oseko, where the court heard their visas had expired.