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Hundreds of migrants are swimming from Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, overwhelming border security, local authorities said on Wednesday.
“In the last few days, more than 1,500 migrants, including adults and minors, have reached Ceuta by sea,” the leader of Ceuta’s government, Juan Jesús Vivas, told journalists. “The reception centers are collapsed and saturated.”
Vivas said migrants previously died in the attempt, with 60 bodies being spotted at sea in the last year.
Spain’s Civil Guard, Maritime Rescue Service and the Red Cross have been using boats to rescue migrants from the water before taking them to Ceuta.
Hundreds are now sleeping outside a migrant reception centre that has exceeded its capacity.
Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, in an interview with Spanish television channel laSexta, acknowledged authorities were facing “an extraordinary, exceptional situation.”
He asserted that “we are dealing with it with the means that we already have deployed there permanently.”
On Wednesday, Grande-Marlaska praised Moroccan authorities, saying they were cooperating and that the relationship with the kingdom was “close and based on loyalty.”
“They are also limiting irregular departures,” he told laSexta.
Those attempting the crossing are mainly Moroccans, along with a small number of Algerians who had been living in Morocco while trying to migrate to Europe, according to activists in Morocco and Ceuta.
It was not clear what prompted so many migrants to swim to Ceuta.
Vivas criticised a Spanish Supreme Court ruling earlier this month that found migrants arriving by sea cannot be immediately returned to Morocco without due process, unlike those who cross into Spain by land, such as by scaling the border fence.
However, some activists, including Omar Naji, president of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights in Eastern Morocco, questioned whether the ruling had triggered the surge. Most Moroccans would have been unaware of the legal decision, he said.
Instead, Naji said the timing of the crossings, which came after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez met Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune last week, reminded him of the May 2021 border crisis, when more than 8,000 migrants poured into Ceuta in just two days.
It has not been confirmed the number of crossings or say how many migrants had reached the territory by swimming.