20100927
africanews

Kenyan Police have arrested 34 Somali migrants last weekend at the border town. The migrants were heading to Nairobi as a transit place to other countries, police said. Two taxi drivers were also detained for trying to negotiate with the security personnel to release the migrants.

The migrants who were escaping the escalating violence in their homeland are 22 males and 12 females.

They had paid 220 dollars each to dealers to bribe their way from Somalia to Nairobi and then on to Mombasa from where they make their way to other countries abroad, police added.

At least 17,000 illegal migrants from the Horn of Africa flee to South Africa annually. Most of them transit through Kenya, according to the International Organization for Migration’s report in February.

The organization said crisis and poverty were forcing Somalis and Ethiopians to carry out dangerous journeys to better places.