Children risk lives to reach Europe

‘Make trafficking crime against humanity’

MELILLA, Spain, June 8, (Agencies): It is midnight and nineyear-old Wahib hides near the port of Melilla, a tiny Spanish territory on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast.

Like scores of other street children here, he is prepared to risk everything to reach mainland Europe.

“No entry, danger of falling,” reads a sign on a fence blocking access to the port.

But the fence is scaled every night by boys doing the “risky”, as they call their dangerous game of hide-and-seek with security forces and guard dogs.

“It means sneaking onto a boat without being seen, without being detected by heartbeat sensors or sniffed out by dogs,” explains Sara Olcina, a volunteer for the Harraga association that tries to help the minors.

Wahib is one of 50 to 100 foreign minors, mainly from Morocco, who sleep on the streets of Melilla after sneaking into the Spanish city with hopes of getting onto a boat, according to a recent report by Madrid’s Comillas Pontifical University.

But the road to Europe is treacherous and the youths’ game of hide-and-seek takes many forms. Some climb over the fence and descend into the port with a rope. Others cling to the undercarriage of trucks waiting to board ferries for mainland Spain.

Attempts to cross the Mediterranean also include hiding among cargo and clambering onto ferries with the aid of mooring ropes.

There are no estimates of how many youngsters actually make it illegally from Melilla into mainland Europe.

Wahib fell in his last failed bid and sports a badly-healed wound on the back of his head.

The “risky” caused at least four deaths in 2015 and 2016 in Melilla, according to local media, including two Moroccan minors who drowned as they tried to approach a boat.

Olcina remembers a group of children who lived in the streets last year. “The youngest was seven, the eldest 10,” she says. “Many boarded boats illegally.” Some children live in difficult-to-access caves facing the Mediterranean which they reach by making a perilous climb, sleeping on flattened cardboard boxes.

Others spend their nights in filthy hiding places under bridges or on public benches.

Many of the youngsters sniff glue to get high, making it easier to take their “risky” activities as a game.

Bilal, 14, has a cheerful face and wears a filthy sweatshirt decorated with a rabbit. He has already made “three attempts this week.” His older brother, he says, made it across to mainland Spain.

boarded the ill-fated flight.

Dutch investigators and a victims’ foundation reached an agreement to view CCTV camera footage taken at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport on July 17, 2014, hours before the plane took off.

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 passenger jet was shot down

over eastern Ukraine on the same day en route to Kuala Lumpur killing all 298 on board, most of them Dutch citizens.

“We told relatives yesterday that we’ve reached an agreement with the public prosector’s office to view these images,” said Evert van Zijtveld, chairman of the

Originally from the Moroccan city of Fez, he arrived in Melilla, an 80,000-strong city, in January.

But he spent just “four days” at a reception centre for minors before he escaped.

Nearby, one of his friends is covered in grease from a truck after a failed “risky” attempt, a desperate expression in his eyes.

“We can’t understand how the government of a country like Spain can allow this,” says Jose Palazon, the president of local migrant rights group, Prodein.

He notes the “distress of these children, who are victims of groups that control people on the streets, who sell them glue, who make them beg or steal.”

Melilla and its sister city Ceuta, located some 400 kms (250 miles) further northwest along the coast, have been under Spanish control since the 15th century but are claimed by Morocco.

The only two land borders between Africa and the European Union, they have become infamous for the fortified fences that separate them from Morocco, which migrants routinely try to climb over.

Meanwhile, European police and naval chiefs on Thursday called for migrant trafficking of the kind currently taking place in Libya to be declared a crime against humanity.

At talks in Rome, senior figures in the fight against the deadly trade said such a move would both draw attention to the gravity of the crimes they are trying to stop and make it easier to do so.

“Migrant trafficking as it takes place in Libya should be considered an international crime, a crime against humanity,” said Admiral Enrico Credendino, the head of a European naval force charged with combating trafficking in the Mediterranean.

SOFIA:

Also:

Two Bulgarians and an Afghan were charged on Thursday after nine migrants died when a minibus crashed in southern Bulgaria at the weekend, prosecutors said.

The 16-year-old Bulgarian driver, who did not have a driving licence and is thought to have fallen asleep at the wheel, was also killed. Nine other passengers were hurt.

The Afghan migrant and the Bulgarians charged, aged 29 and 31, are accused of human trafficking for helping the group of 18 men from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria to cross Bulgaria illegally.

One of the Bulgarians was also charged with causing the deaths through negligence, regional prosecutors in the town of Pazardzhik said in a statement.

The owner of the van, which was rented, was arrested by police earlier this week. It was however unclear if he was one of the indicted men.

MH17 victims’ foundation. (AFP)

US, partners plan drill:

About 25,000 military forces from the United States and 23 other countries will take part in a large-scale military exercise called “Saber Guardian” planned in Bulgaria, Hungary and KIEV, June 8, (AFP): A small blast hit the premises of the US embassy in Kiev overnight causing no casualties after an unknown assailant lobbed an explosive device, Ukrainian police said on Thursday.

“Investigators found that an unknown person threw an explosive device onto the territory of the diplomatic mission,” the police said in a statement.

The US embassy confirmed that an “incident involving a small incendiary device” happened just after midnight but said diplomats were working “as normal” after no damage was caused.

Romania next month.

In addition, several US B-1B heavy bombers have arrived in Britain in support of two separate multinational exercises planned in the Baltic region and other parts of Europe this month to improve coordination among partner countries.

The US military plans were announced by Stuttgart-based US European Command, which said this year’s Saber Guardian exercise - held annually in the Black Sea region since 2013 - was “larger in both scale and scope” than previous exercises. (RTRS)

Kosovo IS commander killed:

A self-proclaimed commander of Albanians fighting with Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, notorious at home in Kosovo for a video showing him beheading a man, has been killed, police and his family said on Thursday. Lavdrim Muhaxheri died in the Middle East, but it was not clear in which country or when, they told Reuters.

A video posted on the Internet in 2014 showed Muhaxheri beheading a young man in Iraq accused by IS of spying for the Iraqi government. Another video showed him killing another person with a rocket-propelled grenade. (RTRS)