IIs arrested trying to enter by sampan
Police mounted an air, land and sea search yesterday, arresting a mainland woman and 16 suspected illegal immigrants attempting to enter Hong Kong in a sampan.
Police said the 16 suspects - all men from Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh aged between 20 and 40 - were picked up by police radar at 3.45am as their vessel came from the mainland towards Deep Bay.
The 7-metre-long boat with a single engine was spotted by officers off Tsim Bei Tsui and a police launch gave chase.
'Seeing our police launch, the motorised boat fled at full speed. It ran aground and the people on board jumped out and ran into the mangroves,' a police spokesman said.
A mainland woman, 21, fell into the water trying to jump ashore and was injured by the boat's propeller, the spokesman said.
She was taken to Tuen Mun Hospital where she was reported to be in a stable condition.
A search was launched after the woman told officers that more than 10 people had run ashore.
With the help of a government helicopter, police spotted and arrested 16 men in the mangroves near Lut Chau at 7am. Police said the head of the human smuggling operation managed to escape. 'Investigation showed that they flew to the mainland and were then smuggled to Hong Kong from Shenzhen to work illegally here,' the officer said.
'We believe that they were required to pay between HK$2,000 and HK$3,000 a head for the trip.'
They opted to be smuggled in after failing to get travel visas, he said.
Figures from the Immigration Department show that illegal immigrants arrested for working in Hong Kong jumped to 628 last year from 170 in 2005. Eighty illegal immigrants were arrested in the first two months of this year.
