By Zakia Abdennebi

RABAT, May 23 (Reuters) - The United Nations refugee agency has closed its office in Morocco after African migrants barged into the building to demand residence papers, jobs and healthcare, the agency's local head said on Wednesday.

Dozens of migrants from countries including Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone and Nigeria were camping outside the Rabat offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to show their desperation at being trapped in poverty in Morocco.

"About 15 people invaded the HCR and demanded to see me by force," local UNHCR representative Johannes van der Klaauw told Reuters. "They used violence and this is intolerable. We had great difficulty convincing them to leave the building."

He decided to close the office for the time being but said he preferred not to ask the Moroccan authorities to disperse the protesters for fear the migrants might be mistreated.

"We are trying to have a dialogue with them and avoiding calling the security forces, but at a certain moment it risks getting out of hand," said van der Klaauw.

The UNHCR says there are around 600 official refugees in Morocco and estimates more than 10,000 economic migrants live illegally in the North African country without the paperwork needed to find a job or healthcare.

Most were trying to reach Europe to find work. But tightened border security made it impossible to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, stranding them in a country grappling with poverty and the threat of social unrest.

"We have no food, no medical assistance, nothing," said Mohamed from Niger. "In the last two months I lost my daughter. She died here in Morocco because of inadequate medical treatment. She was six months old."

"We are treated here like sub-humans, as if we have no right to live," said another migrant.

Until last year Morocco gave residence cards to migrants with official U.N. refugee papers, but then stopped granting them automatically. Some migrants with refugee status accuse Moroccan police of ripping up their papers in front of them.

Over the new year, Moroccan police violently rounded up more than 430 sub-Saharan migrants including pregnant women and small children and tried to force them over the Algerian border, rights campaigners said.

Most of the migrants have since returned to the towns where they were arrested, the campaigners said. Morocco's government says it treats migrants fairly and respects their rights.

AlertNet news is provided by