Angola has deported some 60 000 illegal immigrants since launching a major crackdown on clandestine diamond prospecting by foreigners in December, Portugal’s Lusa news agency reported on Tuesday.
Most of the 50 000 illegal immigrants were detained by Angolan security forces in the diamond-rich northeastern provinces of North Lunda and South Lunda, a military official told daily newspaper Jornal de Angola over the weekend, the agency said.
The overwhelming majority of the immigrants detained came from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which borders the two provinces, the paper said.
Among the illegal immigrants found to be involved in clandestine diamond mining in the former Portuguese colony were 876 soldiers from the DRC, it added.
Last week the chief of the Angolan Armed Forces, General Agostinho Nelumba, warned the country was facing a ”silent invasion” by illegal diamond prospectors.
The government says there has been an influx of foreigners into the country since 2002, when 27 years of bloody civil war came to an end.
The army has destroyed miners’s huts, and seized firearms and equipment from them, including generators and satellite telephones, since announcing in December that it was launching a campaign ”without mercy” against traffickers operating in diamond-bearing areas.
Angolan officials said last week they had stepped up security along the nation’s borders in recent months in an effort to curb unauthorised diamond prospecting by illegal immigrants.
The southern African nation shares a border of more than 5 000km with the DRC, Namibia, Zaire and Zambia. – Sapa-AFP