OUJDA, Morocco - Authorities in Morocco provided a plane and buses Monday to send home hundreds of west Africans who trekked to the Mediterranean country in hopes of crossing the sea to start new lives in Europe.
"Flights begin during the morning from Oudja airport" in northeastern Morocco, an interior ministry source said while officials from Mali and Senegal oversaw the repatriation of their compatriots.
The north African kingdom is tantalisingly close to Europe for people from impoverished countries trying to get there, especially since Spain has two small enclaves in Morocco that are technically European territory.
The air evacuation concerned migrants found stranded in a desert region near the Algerian border and others camped out in woods near the enclave of Melilla who agreed to be repatriated, the official said.
Would-be immigrants have for years trekked across the Sahara and set up makeshift camps in Morocco but recently began violently to storm the razor-wire fence of Melilla in night operations by the hundreds.
The Madrid government has come under domestic criticism after reports of harsh treatment by border police of some who got into the enclave and swiftly expelling others formerly taken to reception centres with a hope of entering the European Union.
In recent bids to scale the wire, 14 people have died. Witnesses camped at Bouahfa in southern Morocco, under the care of the charity Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF-Doctors without Borders), told an AFP journalist of their desperate attempts to make it.
The 28-year-old Aboubakar Diallo from Mali said he even tried to reach Melilla by sea, but would not regret being repatriated with his plastic bag containing dates and bread given to him by local villagers.
"It's tough here, hard," he said. "It's worse ... it's hell on earth, lack of water, no food and live ammunition to face. We get treated like animals."
A few said they were determined to try getting to Europe again.
At the weekend, Moroccan officials began putting the foreign immigrants on to coaches to be driven south in convoys to their homelands, escorted by police of the royal gendarmerie.
Senegal's ambassador to Morocco, Ibou Ndiaye, said the first flight was due to take off at 10:00 am (1000 GMT) "but our compatriots will have to wait their turn since the one plane put at our disposal has only 140 seats."
The first plane eventually left for Dakar at noon (1200GMT).
Ndiaye added 317 Senegalese nationals in Oudja were due to be joined by 189 others arrested in Nador, a town 12 kilometres (about seven miles) from the Melilla enclave on the coast.
A further 120 "were hiding out in the forest and I was able to reach them by mobile telephone to offer them the chance to go home," he said. "They were on Sunday bussed to Tangiers and should get to Oudja during the day."
Moussa Coulibaly, the ambassador from Mali, said seven coaches carrying about 500 Malians had arrived in Oudja on Sunday and more were due.
"Their departure for Bamako could be on Tuesday," he said. Mali's minister responsible for expatriates and African integration, Oumar Hamadoune Dicko, was due to hold talks with Moroccan officials. Repatriation "will be voluntary once they're identified," Coulibaly said.
A Moroccan security official confirmed flight timings, saying three to Senegal's capital Dakar would take place on Monday and three for Bamako were scheduled for Tuesday.
Melilla police on Sunday announced a plan to fly 150 immigrants from its north African enclave of Melilla to holding centres on the Spanish mainland, ahead of their likely deportation.
Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso has warned anybody entering Spain without correct papers would likely face immediate deportation, but the country has no repatriation agreements with some countries concerned.
The fate of hundreds of migrants put on to coaches from countries Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria and Togo was of concern Monday to AFVIC, a Moroccan association representing families of victims of clandestine immigration.
AFVIC executive director Hicham Rachidi said staff of the association were following four of 28 buses each carrying between 60 and 100 people and then heading southwest towards neighbouring Mauritania.
One passenger, reached by phone, said that his bus had reached Laayoune, the chief town in the Moroccan-annexed Western Sahara, well on the way to Mauritania.
Moroccan officials on Monday said six of the buses were on the northern edge of the territory. An MSF statement said what Morocco was doing was sending almost 1,400 people by coach "to an unknown destination".
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