MADRID: Hundreds of migrants took advantage of a thick mist to swim to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from neighbouring Morocco on Sunday and early on Monday, local police said.

Spain’s two enclaves on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast, Ceuta and Melilla, share the only land borders of the European Union with Africa. The enclaves sporadically experience waves of attempted crossings by migrants trying to reach Europe.

Many of the migrants arriving in the past 24 hours were intercepted near or on El Tarajal beach next to the Ceuta-Morocco border, a spokesperson for the Guardia Civil police said.

“There was pressure and we handled it with Morocco,” he said, but declined to provide an exact number of people who had attempted to cross or were sent back to Morocco. The spokesperson added that the mist had lifted by Monday morning.

Police have intercepted an average of around 700 migrants trying to enter Ceuta each day since Thursday, with up to 1,500 people making the attempt on Sunday night, according to Cristina Perez, the Spanish government’s representative in Ceuta.

Moroccan nationals detained during the crossings are immediately sent back to Morocco unless they are underage or seeking asylum, Perez said. People from other nationalities are taken to special centres where they are given shelter and released after a few days. Another unknown number of people have managed to sneak illegally into the enclave without being detained by the police, a spokesperson for Perez’s office said.

Two years ago, at least 23 people died in a stampede when about 2,000 migrants tried to storm into Melilla, pushing down the border fence.

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2024