Protesters set fire to a migrant camp in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in North Africa on Thursday and demanded the migrants’ immediate return to Morocco, UNN writes, citing dpa.
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According to DW, protesters in Ceuta on Thursday not only set fire to a migrant camp, but clashes with police also broke out. The unrest occurred a month after a massive influx of migrants from Morocco into the Spanish enclave.
Television footage from Benitez Beach, where migrants had been camping for weeks, showed civilians repeatedly throwing objects into the fire.
Police separated the demonstrators from the migrants, who retreated to the pier. Earlier, demonstrators had tried to stop Red Cross vehicles carrying food and water for the migrants.
At the end of July, up to 80,000 migrants arrived in Ceuta en masse from Morocco, many of them by sea. According to official data, at least 96 people died. Most of the migrants returned shortly afterward, but several thousand remain in Ceuta.
Spain’s conservative opposition called for their return. However, international agreements and a Spanish court ruling prohibit collective deportations and require individual assessments of cases.
Unaccompanied minors are entitled to special protection. It is believed that around 1,500 children and adolescents are among the migrants, and 500 of them are considered particularly vulnerable, mostly girls, who are planned to be transferred to mainland Spain.
The left-wing government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is facing growing pressure over the crisis, while the opposition accuses him of inaction and abandoning the residents of Ceuta.
The country’s government has also provided contradictory accounts of whether the authorities were warned about the mass arrival.
Spain’s Defense Minister Margarita Robles said that the CNI, the intelligence service under the jurisdiction of her ministry, had warned the authorities a day before the influx.
Meanwhile, the country’s Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska and other government members stressed that there had been no warnings of an influx on such a scale.
Sánchez is due to address parliament about the crisis next week.