Spain prosecutor opens probe into Melilla deaths

MADRID: Spanish public prosecutors said on Tuesday they had opened an investigation into the deaths of at least 23 migrants during a mass attempt to cross from Morocco into Spain’s Melilla enclave.

The announcement came a few hours before the United Nations denounced what it called “excessive force” by authorities on the border between Morocco and Spain and demanded an investigation into the migrants’ deaths.

The tragedy happened at dawn on Friday when around 2,000 migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, tried to break through the fence from Morocco into the tiny Spanish enclave.

Moroccan authorities said some had fallen while trying to scramble over the fence, giving an initial toll of 18 dead, but later raising it to 23 after another five migrants died of their injuries. They said 140 Moroccan police were wounded.

Very few details about the incident were available, but Spanish media showed images of many people lying on the ground, some with bloodied hands and torn clothes.

“We want to know what happened so we can explain it to the relatives of those who died,” said Ahmed, an Eritrean migrant who described Friday’s incident as “a massacre”.

He was among around 50 migrants who held a protest on Tuesday in front of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) headquarters in the Moroccan capital Rabat, some raising signs reading “stop killing us”.

“They beat us inhumanely,” said Omar, a migrant who said he was fleeing “war and prison” at home in Sudan. “We don’t feel safe here, our lives are in danger.”

Pascoms, an association for subSaharan migrants in Morocco, blamed the European Union and Morocco for what it called a “disaster”.

The death toll was by far the worst recorded in years of attempts by migrants to cross into Melilla, one of Spain’s two North African enclaves which have the EU’s only land borders with Africa, making them a magnet for migrants desperate to escape poverty.