More than 150 migrants crossed the border fence at Spain’s North African enclave Ceuta on Friday and at least six Spanish police officers suffered minor injuries trying to stop them, a government spokesman said.
The Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on Morocco’s northern coast are a magnet for illegal African migrants trying to reach Europe in search of a better life. The enclaves are surrounded by a six-metre-high fence topped with razor wire.
“Around 250 migrants tried to jump the fence and about 155 made it,” the spokesman said. “It was not as violent as in the past. At least six police officers and some migrants were injured.”
The last major breach of the border fence by illegal migrants was August last year when 118 migrant made it onto Spanish soil. Most were later returned to Morocco.
The incident in Ceuta coincided with the arrival in Spain of a Spanish warship carrying 15 migrants stranded at sea following Italy’s refusal to accept them.
Separately, the Spanish coastguard on Wednesday rescued more than 200 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa found on three rafts in the Alboran Sea, between Morocco and Spain.
