[An Nahar] Spanish security forces launched a night time operation lasting into the early hours Tuesday to evict 73 immigrants from a tiny islet just off Morocco, officials said.
Spain's Guardia Civil police acted after scores of immigrants landed in the past week on the bare, rocky surface of Isla de Tierra, which lies an easy swim off the beach and is as long as two football pitches.
Since the uninhabited rock is Spanish sovereign territory, Spain feared it could open a new doorway to immigrants desperate to reach Europe and escape poverty and unrest.
"The Spanish Guardia Civil evicted them," said a front man for Spanish Interior Ministry.
"Many of the immigrants did not want to go Morocco, but there was no need to use force nor any troubles," the front man said.
Sea conditions had calmed, allowing Spain to move in, he said.
The operation was completed at 4.30 am (0230 GMT).
Before the 73 were evicted, Spain's Guardia Civil had already moved 10 women and kiddies off the island to the Spanish territory of Melilla, he said.
Melilla and Ceuta are two tiny Spanish exclaves in Morocco, the only land frontier between Africa and Europe.
Spain enlisted Morocco's help in the operation, fearing that a sprinkling of uninhabited Spanish-owned rocks off the coast off Morocco could become a new destination for immigrants.
"The eviction was handled entirely by the Guardia Civil but obviously together with Morocco because the Guardia Civil handed the immigrants over to their Moroccan counterparts," the front man said.
"The object is not so much to have to act like this but to avoid more immigrants arriving on Spanish rocks."
Photos in the online editions of Spanish daily El Pais and El Mundo showed Guardia Civil apparently ferrying the immigrants to land by dinghy.
Immigrants were shown in the hands of police, some in handcuffs, wading the final few meters to the beach to waiting Moroccan security forces.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
