“This is the most significant entry attempt [jamais] recorded” in the Spanish enclaveassured the prefecture.
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Nearly 500 migrants managed, on Wednesday March 2, to enter the Spanish enclave of Melilla, located on the northern coast of Morocco, out of a total of 2,500, during the most massive attempt to cross this enclave ever recorded. , according to local authorities. “Around 9:30 a.m., a group of some 2,500 people from sub-Saharan Africa attempted a mass crossing of the Melilla border fence”the prefecture of Melilla said in a statement, adding that 491 migrants had managed to enter the enclave.
“The great violence used by migrants” – equipped “of brackets” to climb the chain-link fence and “sticks” and that “threw stones” – enabled them to “overwhelmed the Moroccan security forces who were trying to prevent them from reaching the fence”explained the prefecture.
Wednesday’s crossing is the largest at the fences of the two Spanish enclaves since July 2018, when more than 600 migrants managed to cross that of Ceuta.
Melilla and the other Spanish enclave of Ceuta, located almost 400 kilometers further west, constitute the only land borders of the European Union in Africa. They are regularly the subject of crossing attempts by illegal migrants seeking to reach Europe to flee war or poverty after crossing part of Africa to Morocco.