The death toll from the mass attempt to cross from Morocco into Spain’s enclave of Melilla has risen to 23, according to Moroccan state TV.
About 2,000 people approached Melilla at dawn on Friday and more than 500 managed to enter a border control area after cutting a fence with shears, the Spanish government’s local delegation said in a statement.
Moroccan officials said late on Friday that 13 people had died of injuries sustained in the incursion, in addition to five who were confirmed dead earlier in the day. On Saturday night the toll was raised to 23 after a further five deaths.
“Some fell from the top of the barrier [separating the two sides],” a Moroccan official said, adding that 140 security personnel and 76 migrants were injured during the attempt to cross.
It was the first such mass incursion since Spain and Morocco mended diplomatic relations last month. The Spanish government’s local delegation said only that 49 Spanish police were lightly injured.
Morocco had deployed a “large” number of forces to try to repel the assault on the border and they “cooperated actively” with Spain’s security forces, it said earlier in a statement. Images on Spanish media showed people lying on the pavement in Melilla, some with bloodied hands and torn clothes.
Speaking in Brussels, the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, condemned the “violent assault”, which he blamed on “mafias who traffic in human beings”.
Melilla and Ceuta, Spain’s other tiny north African enclave, have the EU’s only land borders with Africa, making them a magnet for migrants and refugees.
On Thursday night security forces “clashed” on the Moroccan side of the border with people trying to cross, Omar Naji of the Moroccan rights group AMDH said. Several of them were hospitalised in Nador, he added.
In March this year, Spain ended a year-long diplomatic crisis by backing Morocco’s autonomy plan for Western Sahara, going back on its decades-long stance of neutrality. Sánchez then visited Rabatand the two governments hailed a “new stage” in relations.
The row began when Madrid allowed Brahim Ghali, the leader of Western Sahara’s pro-independence Polisario Front, to be treated for Covid-19 in a Spanish hospital in April 2021.
A month later, about 10,000 people crossed the Moroccan border into Ceuta as border guards looked the other way, in what was widely seen as a punitive gesture by Rabat.
Rabat calls for the Western Sahara to have an autonomous status under Moroccan sovereignty but the Polisario wants a UN-supervised referendum on self-determination as agreed in a 1991 ceasefire agreement.
In the days just before Morocco and Spain patched up their ties, there were several attempted mass crossings into Melilla, including one involving 2,500 people, the largest such attempt on record. Nearly 500 made it across.
Patching up relations with Morocco – the departure point for many migrants and refugees – has meant a drop in arrivals, notably in Spain’s Canary Islands. The number who reached the Canary Islands in April was 70% lower than in February, government figures show.
Sánchez earlier this month warned that “Spain will not tolerate any use of the tragedy of illegal immigration as a means of pressure”.
Spain will seek to have “irregular migration” listed as one of the security threats on Nato’s southern flank when the alliance gathers for a summit in Madrid on 29 and 30 June.
Over the years, thousands of people have attempted to cross the 12km (7.5-mile) border between Melilla and Morocco, or Ceuta’s 8km border, by climbing the fences, swimming along the coast or hiding in vehicles.
The two territories are protected by fences fortified with barbed wire, video cameras and watchtowers.