people-smuggling (Photo : REUTERS/DAMIR SAGOLJ)
A 19-year-old woman smuggled an 8-year-old Ivory Coast boy from Morocco into Ceuta, an enclave in Spain next to Morocco, by putting the boy inside a suitcase as revealed by X-ray on May 7, Thursday, Spanish police reported.
The woman was found carrying the suitcase with the boy named Abou inside, who was in a "terrible state," a Guardia Civil spokesman said, BBC News reported.
The boy's father also named Abou was said to have paid the woman to carry the suitcase and the woman and the boy are not related. Living in the Canary Islands, the father reportedly had hoped to be reunited with the boy.
Having moved to Gran Canaria in 2013, the boy's father had travelled back to Ivory Coast across the border an hour-and-a-half to pick up his son. The woman carrying the suitcase reportedly seemed to hesitate and looked like she did not want to come through the border.
At first, the police thought that there could be drug packages in the suitcase but they eventually found out the woman was carrying a suitcase with a human body as the X-ray revealed.
Meanwhile, on May 8, Friday, the United Nations refugee agency United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported an estimated 25,000 Rohingyas and Bangladeshis boarded boats of people-smugglers in the first three months of 2015, which is twice as many in the same period of 2014.
In a statement obtained by Reuters, UNHCR said, "Based on survivor accounts, we estimate that 300 people died at sea in the first quarter of 2015 as a result of starvation, dehydration and abuse by boat crews."
