MADRID (Reuters) – About 400 migrants on Friday stormed a excessive fence that seals off Spain’s North African enclave of Melilla, of whom a big group managed to cross over from Morocco after a two-hour skirmish with border officers, Spanish authorities mentioned.
Melilla and Ceuta, a second Spanish enclave additionally on Africa’s northern coast, have over the previous decade change into widespread crossing factors for unlawful African migrants making an attempt to get into Europe.
“A big group of sub-Saharans… broke via the entry gate of the Barrio Chino border checkpoint and entered Melilla by leaping over the roof of the checkpoint,” the Spanish authorities’s consultant authority there mentioned in a press release, with out saying what number of crossed.
The storming of the border started round 6:40 a.m. native time and the crossing occurred at 8:40, “regardless of an in depth operation by Moroccan forces,” it mentioned.
The incursion was the primary vital one into both enclave since mid-March, when Spain adopted a pro-Morocco stance over Western Sahara, a territory that Rabat considers its personal however the place an Algeria-backed independence motion is demanding the institution of a sovereign state.
In the weeks of 2022 previous to that shift, migrant entries into the 2 enclaves had greater than trebled in contrast with the identical interval of 2021.
In mid-2021, as many as 8,000 folks swam into Ceuta or clambered over its fence over a pair of days, taking benefit of the obvious lifting of a safety internet on the Moroccan aspect of the border following a bilateral diplomatic spat.
(Reporting by Emma Pinedo, modifying by Aislinn Laing and John Stonestreet)
