NADOR, Morocco, June 25 — Moroccan rights activists on Saturday demanded an investigation into the deaths of at least 18 African migrants who were among hundreds that tried a mass crossing into the Spanish enclave of Melilla.
Moroccan officials said late Friday that 13 migrants had died of injuries sustained in the incursion, in addition to five confirmed dead earlier in the day.On Saturday calm returned to the border area, with Moroccan security forces lightly deployed along the frontier, in a forested area where no migrants were to be seen.Others “have probably moved away for fear of being displaced by the Moroccan authorities,” Mohamed Amine Abidar of the AMDH rights group told AFP.
Speaking in Brussels, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez condemned the “violent assault”, which he blamed on “mafias who traffic in human beings”.Melilla and Ceuta, Spain’s other tiny North African enclave, have the European Union’s only land borders with Africa, making them a magnet for migrants. In March, Spain ended a year-long diplomatic crisis by backing Morocco’s autonomy plan for Western Sahara going back on its decades-long stance of neutrality.The row began when Madrid allowed Brahim Ghali, leader of Western Sahara’s pro-independence Polisario Front, to be treated for Covid-19 in a Spanish hospital in April 2021.
In the days just before Morocco and Spain patched up their ties, there were several attempted mass crossings of migrants into Melilla, including one involving 2,500 people, the largest such attempt on record. Nearly 500 made it across.The mending of ties has meant a drop in migrant arrivals in Spain, notably in the Canary Islands.
Spain will seek to have “irregular migration” listed as one of the security threats on the NATO’s southern flank when the alliance gathers for a summit in Madrid on June 29-30.
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