Spanish authorities said Thursday they had retrieved nine bodies near the border with Morocco after thousands of migrants attempted to cross into the enclave of Ceuta overnight, prompting Madrid to send military and police reinforcements as clashes and stampedes left people stranded on both sides of the frontier.
Spanish state broadcaster TVE reported that between 2,000 and 3,000 people made it into Ceuta on Thursday, with most successful crossings occurring before midday, according to residents of the Moroccan border town of Fnideq. The circumstances and causes of the nine deaths were not immediately detailed by authorities.
Reuters journalists at the scene found the charred remains of a bus and seven other vehicles near the crossing point, set ablaze during clashes that broke out as security forces moved to hold back the crowds. Moroccan authorities deployed water cannon trucks and repeatedly pushed back migrants attempting to approach the border gates, which remained effectively closed through much of the day even as groups moved along the coastline searching for alternate routes around the security fence, with some preparing to swim.
Brahim, 32, who like several migrants interviewed gave only one name, said he had traveled from Tangier hoping to slip through the border gate before finding it sealed. “I was late,” he said. Another migrant described being caught in a stampede during an attempted crossing along a narrow coastal route, with people pushing and stepping on one another in the chaos. “I feared for my life,” he said, declining to give his name.
Families were caught in the disorder as well. Fatima Mahli, 23, a resident of the Moroccan city of Tetouan, sat with her two young daughters on a patch of grass beside the road leading to the crossing early Friday after her husband left before dawn to attempt a swim to Ceuta alone. “I thought I could cross by foot through the border. But we are stuck here, unable to go back home,” she said, describing how the family’s plan to cross together fell apart when her husband decided to go ahead on his own.
Traffic clogged the roads into Fnideq through the night as more people, including minors, continued to arrive, some walking the highway into the city and others taking mountain paths to avoid checkpoints. Security forces repeatedly turned back crowds making concerted rushes at the crossing, while migrants regrouped on nearby roads, hillsides and open ground to wait for another opportunity.
Ceuta and its sister enclave, Melilla, represent the European Union’s only land borders with Africa, and both have long served as flashpoints for attempted crossings into Europe. A previous surge in 2021 saw thousands cross into Ceuta over several months after a diplomatic rift between Spain and Morocco, while a 2022 rush on Melilla’s border fence left at least 18 migrants dead, according to Moroccan authorities at the time, in one of the deadliest such incidents on record. Ceuta itself is home to about 85,000 residents, a population Thursday’s arrivals, who included women, children and migrants from both Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa, would represent a significant addition to if allowed to remain.
The surge comes as Spain’s Socialist-led government pursues an unusually permissive migration policy relative to much of Europe, including a recently launched program to grant legal status to roughly 500,000 undocumented migrants already in the country — a program that has drawn applications from more than a million people, double the number the government had anticipated.
By Friday morning, migrants continued to gather in Fnideq and along the coast, with no indication from Spanish or Moroccan authorities of when heightened security at the crossing might ease.
