Reuters reports that there has been a recent increase in the shootings of African migrants by Egyptian authorities along the Egypt-Israel border. Six Africans have been shot to death by Egyptian police since May. “Monthly migrant arrests by Egypt at the border have surged, rising five-fold in May to 55 and then doubling again to 114 in June and 160 in July, security sources said. That compares to just six arrests in January.”
The article suggests that the migrant and refugee stream from the Horn of Africa that has most recently tended to cross Egypt to Libya and then on to Italy may now be shifting to the east because the route from Libya to Italy is blocked by the Italy-Libya agreement to turn back migrants.
“’The numbers (at the Egypt-Israel border) are increasing. That route is being used again more heavily than before,’ said Gasser Abdel Razek, Egypt country director of refugee legal aid group AMERA. ‘I heard it (Libya) is becoming difficult for them … I am hearing there is strong monitoring along this route, on the border between Libya and Sudan,’ said Mohamed Dualeh, head of an office of the U.N. refugee agency in Kassala in east Sudan, through which many migrants transit, especially Eritreans. ‘If you are a human being, and you cannot go because one route is blocked, you look for another route,’ he said.”
Click here for the article.
MIGRANTS AT SEA 