RIYADH: Saudi Arabia has intercepted 122 illegal migrants trying to reach the Kingdom from Africa by sea, official media said Monday.
In the past two days Border Guards disrupted four attempts by people trying to enter the Kingdom from the Red Sea, the Saudi Press Agency said.
Patrol boats intercepted three wooden boats with the 122 "infiltrators" including women and children, it quoted Border Guards spokesman Col. Sahir Al-Harbi as saying.
Most of them, 109, were Sudanese, whose impoverished homeland lies on the other side of the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia. There were also 11 Nigerians, one Ethiopian and one Chadian.
According to the United Nations, since 2014 more than 10,000 people have died crossing the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe, which is experiencing its worst migrant crisis since World War II.
During the period of 2000-2005, an estimated 440,000 people per year emigrated from Africa, most of them to Europe. According to Hein de Haas, the director of the International Migration Institute at the University of Oxford, public discourse on African migration to Europe portrays the phenomenon as an "exodus", largely composed of irregular migrants, driven by conflict and poverty.
