African migrants attack Spanish patrol

SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Canary Islands — African migrants trying to reach Spain in a small, crowded boat hurled Molotov cocktails at a patrol vessel that tried to stop them, police said — the first known attack from Africans risking their lives for a toehold in Europe.

The wooden boat was carrying 57 people, including two children, when a Spanish patrol boat intercepted it April 4 off the coast of Mauritania, police in the islands said Tuesday. Spanish vessels are stationed in Mauritania as part of a European effort to keep Africans from setting out on dangerous journeys to the Canary Islands.

When the patrol boat got close, some of those aboard the smaller vessel threw Molotov cocktails and other projectiles at the Spanish boat, police said. No one was injured.

Spanish Civil Guard police dropped an inflatable raft into the water and used it to try again to get close to the Africans and calm them down, but people on the boat tried to slash the raft with sharp objects, police said.

Authorities in the Canary Islands said it was the first time a patrol boat trying to detain people on the high seas came under attack in the decade since the Canary Islands became a destination for Africans trying to escape poverty and reach Europe's southern gateway.

José Segura, director of the Spanish Interior Ministry office in the islands, expressed hope that "this will just be an isolated incident, fruit of the desperation of these people in the middle of the ocean as they try to reach Europe."

Rather than open fire to stop the boat, the Spaniards let it continue on to the Canary Islands. It arrived Sunday on the southeast coast of the island of Gran Canaria and everybody on board was detained.

Normally, Africans who manage to reach the Canary Islands in such overcrowded boats are kept in a holding camp for 40 days and eventually set free, but without residency papers or work permits, if the Spanish authorities cannot identify them.

This time Mauritania has agreed to take back the alleged assailants — their precise number is not known — right away for trial because the attack occurred in Mauritanian waters. The rest of the people on the boat will be allowed to stay in Spain.