Spain’s prime minister has rushed to Ceuta to defuse a growing crisis after an estimated 60,000 migrants poured into the Spanish enclave in north Africa from Morocco in a single day.
Local authorities in Ceuta said at least 34 people had died, many of them by drowning, as crowds streamed over the border by land and sea on Thursday, overwhelming border guards.
Spanish authorities said they would try to expel those who had entered illegally as quickly as possible, despite a court ruling that has put some new restrictions on special “border rejection” rules that allow immediate expulsions.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez linked the mass crossings to a recent ruling by Spain’s supreme court that migrants arriving by sea cannot be returned to Morocco.
The mass crossings constituted a “violation of Spain’s territorial integrity,” he said in a speech on Friday after arriving in Ceuta, a spit that juts out into the Mediterranean Sea from the Moroccan coast.
“What happened yesterday deserves our full reproach, our full condemnation,” he said.
“The government of Spain will use all the instruments of the state, all the resources of the state, to guarantee the security of the people of Ceuta,” he added.
Juan Jesús Vivas, president of the autonomous government of Ceuta, estimated that 60,000 people crossed the border, and 34 had died attempting to do so.
