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Benin police await 'slave' ship

COTONOU, Benin (CNN) -- Benin police were awaiting the arrival of a ship said to be carrying up 250 children intended for slave labour.

The ship has been seeking a port on Africa's western coast for more than a week.

Benin police said the ship left Cotonou a week ago, bound for Libreville, Gabon, where it was refused entry.

It then headed to Douala, Cameroon, but officials there refused to let it dock, so the vessel was returning to Benin.

Cotonou police said there were about 250 children on the ship, from Benin and neighbouring Togo, though Douala police said the ship carried 28 children and 148 adults.

Officials from aid agency UNICEF were at the port awaiting the ship's arrival, said spokeswoman Esther Guluma.

She said the children would be cared for by a doctor while the agency worked to find their parents.

Guluma said police told her they would make arrests when the ship docks, either late on Friday or early on Saturday.

It was unclear in what capacity the children were traveling. Guluma said it was possible the children were involved in illegal child trafficking.

Often traffickers will offer poor families money to take their children to other countries, she said.

The families accept, believing their children will send money home, but the children are often re-sold as plantation workers or domestic servants and are never able to send wages to their families.

"Trafficking children ... is very similar to slavery because the children are normally not paid and they work very, very hard labour in the plantations and in other areas where they work," Guluma told CNN.

"The conditions are not the same as slavery, but they work as slave labour, in essence."



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