Photos: Eight-Year-Old Boy Smuggled Across Border In Suitcase

(AFP) - Police found an eight-year-old Ivorian boy hidden in a suitcase that was smuggled across the border into Spanish territory in north Africa, an official said on Friday.

A 19-year-old woman took the case through a pedestrian crossing from Morocco into the small Spanish-governed territory of Ceuta on Thursday, a spokesman for the Civil Guard police force said.

"When they put the suitcase through the scanner, the operator noticed something strange, which seemed to be a person inside the case," he told AFP.



"When it was opened they found a minor, in a terrible state."

The boy said he was eight years old and from Ivory Coast, according to the spokesman.

The Civil Guard arrested the woman, who was due to go before a judge.

Spanish authorities say a young woman tried to take the suitcase through a pedestrian crossing from Somalia.

They also arrested the boy's father when he tried to cross the border a few hours later. The father is Ivorian and lives in Spain's Canary Islands.