Rabat – The Royal Moroccan Navy has rescued 367 irregular migrants from the Mediterranean, including women and children, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa.
The migrants were aboard several inflatable boats in trouble, according to a military source.
The royal navy brought the migrants safely back to Morocco.
The Moroccan navy rescued 202 irregular migrants aboard unsafe bots in the Mediterranean Sea on December 22 and 23.
In November, Maghreb Arab Press (MAP) said that Morocco has disrupted 76,000 undocumented migration attempts in 2018.
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Thousands of sub-Saharan Africans use Morocco as a transit country to reach Europe. Local youth in northern Morocco also seek migration due to unemployment in the country.
Morocco, however, has also become a final destination for migrants, according to Morocco’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Nasser Bourita.
Bourita emphasized in a recent interview with BBC that migrants should not be treated as criminals. The official also said that “migration is a natural, universal phenomena.”
Bourita said that there are an estimated 256 million migrants globally, both documented and undocumented. He said that out of the 256 million migrants, 36 million are African.
