Hundreds of migrants have entered the Spanish north African exclave of Ceuta by sea in recent days, officials said Thursday, with local television images showing them swimming around the frontier and running into the town.
Migration from Morocco into Spain‘s two north African territories, Ceuta and Melilla, has long been a politically sensitive issue between the two countries.
The two Spanish territories represent the European Union‘s only land border with Africa.
“We are in a situation of total humanitarian and social emergency,” said the president of the territory, Juan Jesus Vivas, in comments broadcast on Thursday by Spanish television.
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“In the past few days more than 1,500 migrants, both adults and minors, have come to Ceuta by sea,” he said in other televised comments on Wednesday.
“The reception centres are saturated – there is no more room for anyone in them and according to yesterday’s figures the number of people entering is more than 200 a day.”
He added that facilities for unaccompanied minors were operating at 2,400 percent capacity.
Officials could not immediately be reached on Thursday to give more recent figures.
Spain’s interior ministry said in a statement that several ministries were “acting in coordination to respond with the utmost speed and efficiency to the situation in Ceuta”.
Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska would travel to Ceuta on Friday “to monitor the situation” and meet officials, it said.
It said the government had increased its resources “to guarantee security and control of migration as well as the necessary humanitarian aid, so that no lives are put in danger at sea”.
It said the Moroccan government was working “faithfully and permanently with Spain and collaborating closely to deal with the situation”.
“Moroccan security forces are preventing the arrival of numerous people who are trying to reach Ceuta from Morocco.”
Spain’s Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that migrants intercepted at sea while attempting to reach Ceuta or Melilla cannot be summarily returned under the enclaves’ special border-rejection regime.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)
