(ANSAmed) – TEL AVIV, SEPTEMBER 27 – Israel has expelled 20,000 of 60,000 illegal migrants that have entered the country, the newspaper Israel Hayom reported Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as saying during a meeting of supporters of his Likud party in Tel Aviv.

According to the report, Netanyahu said that another 20,000 would soon be leaving Israel.

“We will make all the illegal infiltrators leave, because they are illegal,” the paper quoted him as saying. “We have strengthened our borders and blocked the infiltrations,” he added, according to the article.

The newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that there were about 30,000 Eritreans in Israel (out of a total of about 40,000 migrants). At least 7,000 Eritreans have asked for political asylum but the Israeli interior minister has accepted only six requests, rejecting the others.

According to that paper, the ministry does not think that the lives of the Eritreans that head back to their country are in danger, an opinion Amnesty International does not share.

In recent years Israel has forced thousands of migrants to return to Africa, mainly to Rwanda and Uganda. (ANSAmed). SOURCE   http://www.ansamed.info/