Now traffickers are using jetskis to ferry Africans over to Europe

PEOPLE smugglers have turned to a new mode of transport to ferry migrants to Europe – jetskis.

They are being zipped from north Africa into Ceuta, the Spanish enclave on the coast of Morocco. This week 12 were dropped off a few feet from land.

One man, believed to be a 28-year-old from Guinea, drowned before he could be dropped off to shore in the small town of Benzu.

The Civil Guard discovered his body among the rocks shortly after the incident.

In a separate incident, Spanish rescue workers saved 11 more refugees from a boat which had been abandoned by smugglers in the sea near Benzu.

Local media reported that nine smugglers took part in the operation that left the 12 sub-Saharan Africans near a beachside cafe and quickly fled. Among the migrants were two women and a child who are being cared for by the Red Cross.

The incident comes as the International Organization for Migration warned that Spain could overtake Greece this year in the number of migrants arriving by sea.

On Monday nearly 700 sub-Saharan Africans tried to reach Spanish soil by storming the border crossing between Morocco and Spain’s enclave of Ceuta opposite Gibraltar.

CCTV footage showed a police officer suffering a broken leg as he tried to trip one of the men sprinting through a glass door they had forced open.

Officials later closed the crossing to Moroccan traders for a week citing ‘migra- tory pressures’. Ceuta has one of two of the EU’s only land borders in Africa which makes it a target entry point to people desperate to make it into Europe.

Migrants regularly climb the border fences, swim along the coast or hide under vehicles crossing the border. Once on Spanish soil they hope to be taken to migrant reception centres where they can apply for asylum or take their chance at hiding in lorries boarding ferries destined for Europe.

Yesterday Angela Merkel said that while a lot has been done to address the causes of mass migration and to slow the flow of refugees to Europe, there is still a lot more to do. The Chancellor famously opened Germany’s doors to asylum- seekers in 2015. Some 890,000 migrants entered the country that year, many fleeing civil war in Syria.