Spain has deployed military units to assist police in the North African enclave of Ceuta following a sharp increase in migrants arriving by sea and land from Morocco, while officials worked to close off another nearby Spanish enclave.
State broadcaster TVE reported that between 2,000 and 3,000 people entered Ceuta on Thursday, a figure that Reuters was not immediately able to verify.
Video footage captured hundreds of migrants swimming or drifting on inner tubes from the Moroccan side, while others forced their way through a gate on land and rushed into the city.
In Fnideq, a Moroccan town located just past the Ceuta border, Moroccan authorities used water cannons on migrants late Thursday night in an effort to stop them from crossing, according to witnesses who spoke to Reuters.
It was extremely difficult. The police attempted to block us, but our resolve and determination enabled us to reach this place," said migrant Jadid Zacaria, his hair and shirt still damp from the sea, in an interview in Ceuta on Thursday afternoon as other migrants passed through a nearby border gate.
In Melilla, Spain’s second autonomous city in North Africa, footage released by local media and human rights groups appeared to show confrontations at the Beni Ansar border crossing late Thursday. This has been the sole open passage between Morocco and Melilla for the last six years.
Local authorities reported on Thursday that nine bodies were discovered in Ceuta, bringing the death toll of migrants who have lost their lives trying to enter the enclave in recent months to 60.
The situation recalled events in 2021, when around 10,000 people from Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa, many of them minors, crossed into Ceuta, a city of 85,000 residents.
According to his office, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will travel to Ceuta on Friday, joined by Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, to hold meetings with security forces and local authorities.
Ceuta and Melilla contain the European Union’s only land frontiers with the African continent. Both enclaves regularly face waves of attempted entries by migrants trying to access Europe.
