Date Published: 12/07/2021
ARCHIVED - 119 migrants scale Melilla border fence; five police reportedly injured
ARCHIVED ARTICLE In the latest organised mass attempt 119 African migrants managed to get over the border fence and into the Spanish city of Melilla
Some 200 migrants stormed the border between Morocco and Melilla in the early hours of Monday morning during an incident in which 119 men managed to reach Spanish ground.
The group charged the border fence in the area between the Chinese District and Beni Enzar at about 4.30 am, the Spanish government delegation in Melilla has reported.
Five Guardia Civil officers suffered minor injuries while working to turn the crowd back, and one migrant was hurt while jumping off the fence and had to be taken to hospital for attention.
The other 118 migrants have been taken to the CETI migrant centre, where they have been placed in quarantine in case any of them are infected with coronavirus.
Large groups of African migrants regularly try to climb over the borders in Ceuta and Melilla, seeking to enter Spain illegally in search of work, and the Spanish authorities invest a significant amount of effort and resources to try and prevent their entry, with police officers often suffering injuries in the process.
Once the migrants have reached Ceuta, they are technically on Spanish soil and as such are subject to EU legislation; this means that Spain has to be able to prove their country of origin in order to deport them. Often this is simply not possible and the migrants are taken to the Spanish mainland and released as it is simply not possible to hold them in Ceuta.
While the Moroccan authorities usually work to prevent migrants climbing the other side of the fence, diplomatic tensions between the two countries in recent months have led to suspicions that not as much is being done as it should to stop migrants from getting through. In May this year, for example, some 10,000 migrants entered Ceuta by sea as Moroccan border officers reportedly stood by and watched. nearly all of those who crossed the border over that two day period have now been returned to Morocco, many of them voluntarily.
Morocco announced on Monday that travellers from Spain would be forced to quarantine on arrival due to the rapid increase in the covid incidence in Spain.
Spain, France and Portugal are now deemed “high-risk areas” and the Moroccan Ministry of Health will enforce a ten-day quarantine for passengers arriving from those countries unless they have been fully vaccinated.