EL-ARISH: Twenty-five Africans arrested by Egypt over the past two months for trying to enter Israel illegally have started a hunger strike, a security official told AFP on Thursday.
The migrants, most of them Ethiopians or Eritreans, launched the hunger strike on Sunday to protest what they consider delays by their embassies to repatriate them, the official said.
Most of the migrants, who are held at a detention center in the north of the Sinai peninsula, have been sentenced to a one-year suspended sentence for trying to sneak into Israel from Egypt.
The porous border has become a major transit route for migrants, asylum-seekers and drug smugglers.
Israel has repeatedly asked Egypt to clamp down on the traffic, and Egyptian border guards have killed at least 14 migrants who failed to heed warnings and stop as they made their way across the border.
The killings have generated harsh criticism from human rights groups. The migrants say they try to leave Egypt because of poverty and racism. -AFP
