Eighteen people have died after a massive attempt by a large crowd of African migrants to cross from Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Melilla.
Some 2,000 migrants approached Melilla on Friday morning and more than 500 managed to enter a border control area after cutting a fence with scissors, the Spanish government’s local delegation said in a statement.
Moroccan officials said Friday afternoon that 13 migrants had died as a result of injuries sustained during the raid, in addition to five that the death was confirmed early in the day.
“Some fell from the top of the barrier” separating the two sides, said a Moroccan official, who added that 140 security personnel and 76 migrants were injured during the attempted crossing.
It was the first mass incursion of its kind since Spain and Morocco repaired diplomatic relations last month.
The local delegation of the Spanish government only said that 49 Spanish policemen were slightly injured.
Morocco had deployed a “large” number of forces to try to repel the assault on the border and they “actively cooperated” with Spanish security forces, it said earlier in a statement.
Images in the Spanish media showed exhausted migrants lying on the sidewalk of Melilla, some with bloodied hands and broken clothes.
Speaking in Brussels, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has condemned “violent aggression”, which he attributed to “mafias trafficking in human beings”.
Melilla and Ceuta, the other small North African enclave in Spain, have the only land borders of the European Union with Africa, which makes them a magnet for migrants.
On Thursday night, migrants and security forces “clashed” on the Moroccan side of the border, said Omar Naji of the Moroccan rights group AMDH. Several of them were hospitalized in Nador, he added.
Migrants climbing the fences separating Melilla from Morocco. Photography: Javier Bernardo / AP
In March this year, Spain ended a year-long diplomatic crisis in support of Morocco’s autonomy plan for Western Sahara, backtracking on its neutral stance for decades.
Sanchez then visited Rabat and the two governments hailed a “new stage” in relations.
The dispute began when Madrid allowed Brahim Ghali, leader of the pro-independence Polisario Front in Western Sahara, to be treated by Covid-19 in a Spanish hospital in April 2021.
A month later, some 10,000 migrants crossed the Moroccan border into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta while border guards looked the other way, in what Rabat widely regarded as a punitive gesture.
Rabat calls for Western Sahara to have autonomous status under Moroccan sovereignty, but the Polisario wants a UN-supervised referendum on self-determination, as agreed in a 1991 ceasefire agreement.
In the days before Morocco and Spain fixed their ties, there were several attempted mass crossings of migrants in Melilla, including one with 2,500 people, the largest attempt ever recorded. Nearly 500 passed it.
The advance of relations with Morocco, the starting point of many migrants, has meant a decline in arrivals, especially in the Atlantic Canary Islands of Spain.
The number of migrants arriving in the Canary Islands in April was 70% lower than in February, according to government data.
Sanchez warned earlier this month that “Spain will not tolerate any use of the tragedy of illegal immigration as a means of pressure.”
Spain will seek to include “irregular migration” as one of the security threats on NATO’s southern flank when the alliance meets for a summit in Madrid on June 29-30.
Over the years, thousands of migrants have tried to cross the 12-kilometer (7.5-mile) border between Melilla and Morocco, or the 8-km border of Ceuta, climbing fences, swimming along the coast or hiding. if in vehicles.
Both territories are protected by barbed wire fences, video cameras and watchtowers.
Migrants sometimes use hooks and sticks to try to climb the border fence and throw stones at police.