(AFP) Twenty-one Africans remain on the run after escaping custody while being ferried to an immigration detention centre in Pahang, a senior minister said today.

Home Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said police have vowed to tighten the procedure for transporting large numbers of detainees to prevent a repeat of the daring escape, the Bernama news agency reported.

The fugitives are part of a group of 215 Africans who were arrested in Kuala Lumpur yesterday in a major sweep codenamed Ops Black Crow against illegal immigrants and petty criminals.

A 600-strong team of police and immigration officers carried out the operation, which began before dawn and ended with those arrested being loaded onto 10 trucks and sent to the Kemayan detention camp.

Most were from Cameroon, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, and police said, adding that those found to have been involved in crimes and those without valid passports would be deported.

Abdullah said many African immigrants enter Malaysia illegally through Thailand in the north.

After being briefed on the incident along with Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad by Inspector-Generalof Police Norian Mai, he said the arrests should not deter Africans from coming to Malaysia to invest or to do business.

He added that it was government policy to have good relations with African nations.

Disciplinary action

Meanwhile, Deputy Home Minister Chor Chee Heung said that if investigations showed that the escape was due to police negligence, disciplinary action would be taken against the personnel involved.

"Police have launched a massive manhunt for the fugitives. We hope to re-arrest them in the next 24 hours," a police official involved in the search told AFP earlier.

Jempol district police chief Faisal Sahrawi said the Africans started to give problems to the police escort when they arrived at Seremban .

"We believe that they made up excuses of wanting to go to the toilet," he was reported as saying.

But when they disembarked for the rest stop at a local police station, only 51 returned to the trucks while the remainder marched out of the station, he said.

Another policeman said some of the Africans had earlier jumped off the police trucks when the vehicles were going up a hill.