Spain delays migrant deportation

Africans are making treacherous sea journeys to reach Europe

Spain has postponed the repatriation of about 100 illegal migrants to Senegal from the Canary Islands.

Spanish media say the authorities in Senegal refused two flights permission to land "for technical reasons".

Officials said earlier the first flight was to leave the Canaries for Senegal's capital Dakar on Wednesday.

More than 20,000 migrants have arrived on the islands in 2006, many of them on boats from Senegal. Spain describes the influx as a humanitarian crisis.

Some reports suggest the flights may take off later on Thursday, bound for Port Louis in northern Senegal, rather than Dakar.

A previous repatriation deal between Madrid and Dakar collapsed in May after the Senegalese government said its nationals were not being treated humanely.

Spain has denied the allegations.

Click here for details of patrol off West Africa

The Canaries have become a main point of entry for illegal immigrants seeking to reach the EU, following a crackdown on migration to the north African Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in 2005.

The recent surge has prompted the head of the Canaries' government to call the influx Spain's worst humanitarian crisis since the civil war of the 1930s.

The EU's borders agency Frontex launched an operation last month to turn back small boats carrying migrants from Senegal, Cape Verde and Mauritania to the Canary Islands.

But Spain says the operation is not big enough and took too long to get going.

Migrants take to the seas crammed into open wooden boats for a crossing of up to 10 days.

Up to 3,000 of them are believed to have died during the journey.

FRONTEX DEPLOYMENT

Mauritania: 4 former Guardia Civil patrol boats, 1 Guardia Civil patrol boat, 1 Guardia Civil helicopter, 1 Customs patrol

Senegal: 1 Italian ship, 1 Italian plane, 1 Guardia Civil patrol boat, 1 Spanish Police helicopter, 3 Senegalese boats, 1 Senegalese plane, 1 Finnish plane due

Cape Verde: 1 Portuguese frigate

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