The deaths occurred during an attempted mass crossing into the Spanish enclave of North Africa by some 2,000 migrants, according to officials.
Moroccan authorities said 18 migrants were killed and dozens of migrants and police officers were injured in a “stampede” of people trying to cross into the Spanish North African enclave of Melilla.
A spokesman for the Spanish government office in Melilla said some 2,000 people tried to enter the North African city on Friday morning and during a violent two-hour skirmish some 130 successfully broke the border between Morocco and the United States. Spanish enclave.
The Moroccan Interior Ministry said in a statement that the casualties occurred when refugees and migrants tried to climb a border iron fence separating the two territories. Five migrants were killed and 76 were injured, and 140 Moroccan security guards were injured, the ministry said.
Thirteen of the injured migrants later died at the hospital, bringing the death toll to 18, according to Morocco’s official MAP news agency, which cited local authorities. The Moroccan Human Rights Association reported 27 deaths, but the figure could be confirmed immediately.
Spanish authorities said 49 civil guards suffered minor injuries. Four police vehicles were damaged by stones thrown by some migrants.
Images in the Spanish media showed exhausted refugees and migrants lying on the sidewalk of Melilla, some with bloodied hands and torn clothes. Those who managed to cross went to a local migrant center, where authorities were assessing their circumstances.
The incident at the border crossing was the first since Morocco and Spain settled diplomatic relations in March.
“A large group of sub-Saharans [Africans] … Broke the access door to the Barrio Chino border control and entered Melilla by jumping over the roof of the control, “the Spanish government delegation in the area said in a previous statement.
“All of them [are] men and apparently adults, “he added. The migrants arrived at the crossing around 6:40 local time (04:40 GMT) and the crossing took place at 8:40 (06:40 GMT).
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.
Morocco deployed a “large” number of forces to try to repel the crowd from the border and “actively cooperated” with Spanish security forces, the Spanish delegation said in a separate statement.
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.
The president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, 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 border into Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta while Moroccan border guards looked the other way, in what Rabat widely viewed as a punitive gesture.
Rabat calls for Western Sahara to have autonomous status under Moroccan sovereignty, but the Western Sahara Polisario movement wants a UN-sponsored referendum on self-determination, as agreed in a 1991 ceasefire pact.
In the days before Morocco and Spain ended their diplomatic crisis, there were several attempted mass crossings of migrants in Melilla, including one with 2,500 people, the largest attempt ever recorded.
The re-establishment of Spanish ties with Morocco has meant a decline in arrivals and the number of migrants who arrived in the Canary Islands in April was 70 per cent lower than in February, according to government data.