Local authorities in the Nador region reported that a group of illegal migrants from sub-Saharan Africa broke into the occupied city of Melilla trying to scale the iron fence between the cities of Nador and Melilla. Among them 5 people died, according to local authorities, but the Spanish press reveals that the toll is heavier and that Moroccan law enforcement agents also lost their lives trying to prevent migrants from reaching the enclave of Melilla.
For more than a week, a group of sub-Saharan migrants have been engaged in violent altercations with the Moroccan security forces who are trying to prevent them from joining the Spanish side. According to several sources, and the Iberian press, these groups of migrants, by the hundreds, are organized in bands and are armed, prepared to wage a “war” on the Moroccan authorities in order to be able to cross into Spain.
Friday, during the intervention of the police to thwart their attempt at illegal immigration, the candidates for immigration responded in a “very violent” way according to the local authorities of Nador.
The same source indicates that 140 members of these forces were injured with more or less serious injuries, including 5 who were seriously injured. She also claims about the migrants, 76 were injured, of which 13 were seriously injured and 5 were killed as a result of a stampede and some of them fell from the top of the fence.
All the injured, whether in the ranks of the public forces or among the migrants, were transferred to the Hassani Hospital in the city of Nador and the University Hospital Center of Oujda to receive the necessary treatment and care, continued the same sources.
But it is a heavier balance sheet that has been revealed by the Spanish press, in particular La Razon which cites “well-informed” sources. According to the Iberian media, 5 Moroccan agents were killed, including 3 soldiers, a policeman and a gendarme, while the death toll of sub-Saharans stands at 45 dead.
According to the Nius site, which cites close sources, the sub-Saharans who died on Friday morning were nestled on the top of a mountain and in the woods between Nador and Melilla, and would have fallen following an avalanche caused by the jostling. They would have found themselves stuck without being able to get out.
La Razon said that “the clashes between immigrants and agents in recent days have been extraordinarily violent”, adding that Moroccan law enforcement had to counter attempts to illegally enter Melilla 800 to 1 000 immigrants of sub-Saharan origin last week, although it is not their job to protect the Spanish borders.
Until Friday, the security forces managed to prevent groups of sub-Saharan migrants from entering Melilla, but this time the unprecedented violence they faced reportedly injured more than 200 Moroccan agents.
Thus, nearly 220 migrants, of whom about 70 were turned back at the border, managed to make a jump in the Chinatown district. They were immediately driven back to the Moroccan border by the Spanish officers, obviously wanting to get rid of this “chore”.
La Razon speaks of a “large, perfectly organized group” in its clashes with Moroccan security agents, and underlines the “great violence” of these migrants equipped with stones, axes, iron bars.
Security agents, both Moroccan and Spanish, were beaten in the head, and were also bitten violently by the migrants determined to enter Melilla. The groups of migrants were also equipped with frequency devices to circumvent the automatic closures of checkpoints in Chinatown, Spanish security sources said.
The Spanish Civil Guard Association (AEGC), which only had to deal with some of the migrants, spoke in a statement of an “extremely violent aggression” to which the “civil guards who protected the perimeter n ‘have been able to do little except put their own integrity in danger’.
“Proof of this is that there are currently more than 40 emergency workers with various polytraumas: twenty belonging to the territorial patrols and six from the GRS. Agents who received stones, breaking their helmets and some with bites”, indicates the same source, to note that the Spanish Civil Guard is heavily armed and equipped, with very resistant helmets which is not the case of Moroccan law enforcement.
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