About 10,000 Algerian illegal migrants « Haragas » arrested in Europe over past 9 months

The European border monitoring Agency Frontex has revealed in its latest report that nearly 10,000 Algerian “Haragas” or illegal migrants have been intercepted and rounded up in the old continent.

A copy of the report in the possession of “Echorouk” said this contingency happened during the first nine months of last year 2014, by calculating all the migrants’ boats arrested and commandeered either by air or sea border guards in Europe, pending the outcome of the fourth quarter of the year 2014 whose figures have not been published yet by the relevant monitoring agency.

The report shows that the bulk of the Algerians rounded up in Europe occurred not specifically through land borders but especially through air and land routes, while the arrest is carried out after generally discovering a falsification of identity documents either Algerian or French passports as well as through French national identity card forgery.

Nearly triple the number of migrants entered the European Union in 2014 compared to the previous year, mainly due to refugees fleeing war in Syria, the bloc’s border agency Frontex said in its latest report.

“Around 280,000 migrants entered the EU in 2014 compared to just over 100,000 in the previous year. It’s a huge increase,” Frontex spokeswoman Ewa Moncure told media outlets.

“Last year Syrian nationals were the most numerous at the borders, and we know what they are fleeing,” Moncure said, referring to the four-year civil war that has ravaged the country.

Hundreds of people have died in recent months as waves of migrants from North Africa including Algeria and Libya and Middle East conflict zones try to reach Europe, fuelling criticism of rescue efforts.

Italian authorities said that at least 10 more people died after a boat capsized off Sicily when the migrants aboard rushed to meet rescuers.

An increasingly violent and chaotic situation in Libya, a key jumping off point for migrants, has also helped prompt the huge hike in the number of asylum seekers trying to reach Europe.

Responsible for policing the external borders of the 28-nation EU, “Frontex” is based in the Polish capital Warsaw.