Police in Gambia have found 11 bodies and arrested 50 people from neighbouring West African countries who they believe were trying to make their way illegally to Europe, officials said on Sunday. "The 50 suspects are foreigners, mainly Nigerians, Ghanaians and Senegalese who wanted to go to Italy by sea," said a senior police officer in Gambia's capital Banjul, according to Reuters. The bodies, discovered in woodland around the fishing village of Burfut near Banjul last week, were believed to have been members of the same group, police said. It was not clear how they died. Villagers in Burfut said a Senegalese identity card and 500 euros ($605) in cash had been found on one of the bodies. Thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa try to reach Italy via north Africa every year, many of them dying en route from starvation or because their rickety boats fail to survive the journey. The Sicilian coastguard said two weeks ago that more than 800 immigrants had landed in southern Italy in one day alone as the summer traffic of migrants from Africa stepped up a gear.
