CEUTA, Spain, 30 September 2005 — Five African migrants died as hundreds stormed razor-wire fences between Morocco and a Spanish enclave yesterday, putting pressure on Madrid to sort out chaos on Europe’s only land borders with Africa. Up to 600 Africans equipped with makeshift ladders staged a night-time assault on two fences surrounding the outpost of Ceuta, on the North African coast near the Gibraltar Strait.
Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, attending a Spanish-Moroccan summit in the southern city of Seville, said five immigrants had died, two on the Spanish side and three in Morocco. She declined to comment on allegations they had been shot.
A Moroccan immigrant advocacy group said migrants came under fire as they tried to scramble over the three-meter-high barrier topped with coils of sharp wire.
“Bullets have been fired into the migrants storming the fence to force their way onto Spain,” said Jemmah Khalil, chairman of the Friends and Families of Illegal Immigration Victims Association, quoting his group’s activists in the area.
Immigration dominated talks at the summit between Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Moroccan counterpart Driss Jettou.
Madrid ordered an investigation into the deaths and said it would send an extra 480 troops to the region, divided between Ceuta and its other North African enclave of Melilla, 200 km to the east.
More than 1,000 migrants tried to scramble over the fence into Melilla earlier this week. Civil guards in riot gear repelled most of them but around 300 got through.
It was unclear how many migrants entered Ceuta yesterday. Authorities there said at least two of the dead were crushed in a stampede or fell, with between 40 and 50 migrants injured in their desperate bid to reach Europe.
Two others had had bullet wounds, indicating they were shot from the Moroccan side of the fence, news reports said. Sources close to the investigation told the national news agency Efe that bullets had passed through the side of one immigrant and through one buttock of the other. They said the trajectory meant they could only have been fired from Morocco.
