Five migrants were killed and nearly 100 injured on Thursday during an attempt by hundreds of sub-Saharan Africans to cross from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta by scaling the razor wire fences along the border, the Spanish government said.
The mass attempt by several hundred Africans to enter the enclave on Thursday follows a sharp increase over the last two months in the number of migrants to attempt crossing the two razor wire fences that separate Morocco from Ceuta and Spain's other North African enclave, Melilla. Most appear to cross successfully, but many have been injured and nine have been killed, including the toll on Thursday, according to the Spanish government.
Ceuta and Melilla have become magnets for sub-Saharan Africans trying to make their way to Europe, many of them fleeing poverty or ethnic tensions in their own countries. Because the enclaves are Spanish territory, once the migrants arrive they can take advantage of the fact that borders have been virtually erased in the EU.
Because the Spanish government cannot deport the migrants unless it can determine their nationality, many carry no identifying documents, leaving the government few options but to send them to Spain, where many seek to slip away from government monitoring.
The Spanish government announced on Thursday that it would send four army companies, totaling about 500 troops, to the two enclaves to guard against further crossings.
Three of the people killed on Thursday died on the Moroccan side of the border and two on the Spanish side, said Marma Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, the Spanish deputy prime minister.
"The government regrets the loss of human life and hopes for the prompt recovery of those injured," she said.
The news agency Europa Press reported that two of the victims had suffered gunshot wounds, and that the ammunition appeared to correspond with the kind used by Moroccan security forces.
But Spanish and Moroccan officials, who were attending a meeting in Seville to discuss a range of issues, including immigration, said that the causes of the deaths were unclear.
Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, and his Moroccan counterpart, Dris Jettu, announced after an early round of meetings that each country had opened an investigation into the incident and pledged to dedicate more resources to combating illegal immigration.
Four people were killed in similar incidents over the summer, when large groups of migrants tried to cross into Melilla, the Spanish government said.
Human rights groups have suggested that at least one of the four deaths may have been the result of overly aggressive police tactics, but the Spanish government said it found no evidence that security forces were to blame.
The number of attempted crossings into the two Spanish enclaves has surged in the past three years. The president of the government of Melilla, Juan Jose Imbroda, said in an interview published Thursday in the newspaper El Mundo that about 15,000 immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa had attempted to scale the security fences surrounding his city since last year, compared with a total of about 350 in the six previous years.
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