Such was the state shown by the bodies of Africans piled up on the ground, that there was no way to tell with the naked eye if some were still alive or had stopped breathing. Many were passed out, and others were moaning and unable to stand up. A crowd of sub-Saharans threw themselves against a small gate in the border fence of Melilla, and “the last to arrive pushed the first ones wanting to enter. They were crushing each other,” says an agent of the Civil Guard of the autonomous city.
The tragic scene of the tumultuous, violent and mournful hurdle jump attempt summarizes the sad development of this Friday, the worst day in terms of immigration since Spain has rebuilt its relationship with Morocco. The assault, according to Spanish police sources, It started at 6:40 in the morning. It was a thick line of about 2,000 men approaching at a run. At half past eight the most serious crushing occurred, a tumult aggravated by chaos and smoke from boats thrown by the Moroccan gendarmes.
There was a wave of people trying to climb onto the roof of the border control center. The shots of Moroccan riot material knocked down the group, who fell in a human waterfall, bodies falling on top of others.
men on the ground
When the attack broke up, dozens of men turned on the ground or stood still with their eyes closed, waiting for assistance while the gendarmes cordoned them off. Many sub-Saharans had their clothes in a mess, from the fight to breathe and get rid of the pile of men that buried them.
There is not yet a final count of dead and wounded on the Moroccan side, because some of those who are wounded could lose their lives in the next few hours. The Ministry of the Interior of Morocco has informed in a first communication of five dead among the immigrants, “as a result of a stampede. Some fell from the fence”. At the Al Hassani hospital in Nador and the University hospital in Oujda, 140 gendarmes have been treated, five of them serious, and 76 immigrants with injuries of various kinds.
On the Spanish side, the Government Delegation in Melilla has counted on 133 migrants who have managed to enter in the city. Throughout the afternoon, asylum seekers declared themselves, the same police sources report. The same official body reported 49 Civil Guard agents injured, and also 57 immigrants; three of the latter have had to be admitted to the Regional Hospital of the autonomous city for being serious.
rain of stones
The Melilla Civil Guard activated the anti-intrusion device from the outset, with the participation of agents from ten patrols of the Prosecutor and Borders and Citizen Security unit, in addition to a reinforcement of the Security Reserve Group riot police, which in turn was reinforced by four riot control vans and two National Police street patrols. From the first moment they were visible at the point in Chinatown where the fence has its checkpoint. The former, according to the police sources consulted, managed to break the door with a shearsand what became a passageway to the Spanish side was a terrible funnel on the Moroccan side.
A drone and a Civil Guard helicopter have spotted (and recorded) the dramatic entry attempt. A good part of the wounded on the Spanish side are due to stones. “Is that that was youan impressive rain of stones -says a civil guard-. Thousands fell, without exaggeration. They were throwing away everything they found.”
Among the objects thrown there were also dozens of wooden stakes between half and a meter long, tuned by hand. “We don’t know why they were brought, whether to pry something or to confront the gendarmes,” says the guard.
great camps
On the Spanish side, police immigration experts suspect that most of the crowd came from camps on the back side of Mount Gurugú, and also from hills near Segangane. “You can’t stop 2,000 people at the foot of the fence; that’s crazy,” laments one of the Civil Guard agents consulted. “When so many people come to the fence, there they are already unstoppable, and more with the violence that come. And you can’t arrest anyone either, because if you arrest one, you can arrest a hundred others,” he adds.
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In the Spanish security forces they calculate that the ratio at the beginning of the avalanche was 2,000 migrants for 50 gendarmes. When the Moroccan police received reinforcements, the assault turned into a pitched battle and then a stampede towards Spanish territory. It was then that there was the crushing of the rows in front.
The same police sources are urging the Interior, they assure, to promote to Morocco that it does not allow such numerous settlements near the border, dispersing the camps to make the formation of crowds in the direction of the fence more complicated, with greater danger of death the greater is the number of assailants.