Maputo, Mozambique — There has been no confirmation so far of claims made Friday that South African officials threw illegal Mozambican migrants to their deaths off a moving train.

Deportations of Mozambican illegal migrants resumed Friday morning after a three-month absence with 1,600 Mozambicans dropped at the border post of Ressano Garcia.

Some of the deportees told a Radio Mozambique reporter that 14 of their comrades had been thrown off the train while it was moving, and were feared dead.

South African High Commissioner Jessie Duarte had then pledged to investigate the matter, and she had told AIM that "if such a thing happened, it is unacceptable."

But the South Africans' investigations have found no dead bodies beside the railway and nothing else that would substantiate the deportees' claims.

"So far our sources have denied any knowledge of the matter", said the High Commission's first secretary, Thandu Nyawose, Tuesday.

Nyawose told AIM that all avenues had been pursued without any result, and that the South African authorities were left with little alternative but to dismiss the story as false.

He said that the High Commission was now "waiting for a go-ahead from the South African National Police Commissioner to issue a statement regarding the matter."

He hoped that the question would be resolved without tarnishing the relationship between the two countries.