Spain said on Friday that it had reversed a huge rush of migrants into a Spanish enclave in North Africa, with most of the more than 50,000 people who had crossed the border by land and sea already heading back voluntarily.
The Spanish government’s representative in the enclave of Ceuta said 57 bodies had been recovered on the Spanish side of the border and that there could be additional casualties on the Moroccan side.
It said some drowned and some were crushed while trying to climb the breakwater that holds the border fence.
Moroccan forces beat back crowds with batons and tear gas at the gates to Ceuta, trying to prevent more from storming across into the tiny Spanish territory that juts on a spit of sandy land into the Mediterranean from Morocco.
The rush on the border caused division in Europe, where leaders of fellow EU states called for Spain to ensure that the incident was contained.
Right-wing parties around the continent blamed the incident on Spain’s comparatively lax migration policies, including an amnesty granted to hundreds of thousands of unauthorised migrants this year.
France said it was increasing checks on its border with Spain, and Italy threatened to suspend Spain from the EU’s internal open-border scheme.
US President Donald Trump, a long-time critic of Spain’s Socialist government, weighed in on the Ceuta situation. “That’s going to be us in three years if the wrong side gets in,” Fox News cited him as saying, referring to the next presidential election.—Reuters
