MADRID (Reuters) – Dozens 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 off or on the beach of Tarajal on the southern limit of the Ceuta enclave, next to the border with Morocco, a spokesperson for the Guardia Civil in Ceuta told Reuters.
“There was pressure and we handled it with Morocco,” he said, declining to say exactly how many people had attempted to cross and how many had been sent back to Morocco. The spokesman said the mist had lifted on Monday morning.
People crossing the border are invariably detained by the police and sent back to Morocco unless they are under age or asylum seekers, the spokesman added.
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.
(Reporting by Inti Landauro; Editing by Gareth Jones)
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