On Friday, in front of a dozen reporters and several local residents, a team of gravediggers in disposable protective suits and masks began burying some of the dozens of migrants who died three weeks ago during a mass border crossing into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in North Africa, UNN reports, citing Reuters.
Details
A Muslim cleric quickly recited a prayer as workers lowered the first four bodies, wrapped in white body bags, into cinder-block-lined graves arranged next to one another in Ceuta’s Muslim cemetery, while hearses delivered the remaining bodies.
Acting cemetery manager Said Mohammed said that around 70 bodies are expected to be buried in the coming days, with 10–12 burials per day.
Around 95% of those buried have not yet been identified, but each grave has been marked with a numbered stone in case the body is claimed and repatriated, he said.
Hundreds of migrants in Ceuta staged a protest demanding that they be granted asylum17.08.26, 05:16
In addition
Authorities say that between 5,000 and 8,000 people remain in Ceuta after at least 72,000 people crossed the border from Morocco on July 30, resulting in the deaths of 82 migrants on the Spanish side of the border; another 14 deaths were confirmed by Morocco.
The migrants were buried according to Muslim rites, which require that the body be placed facing Mecca and covered with earth, Mohammed said.
According to the latest data from the Ceuta court, authorities have managed to identify only six migrants, all adult men from Morocco. Moroccan relatives of missing migrants are seeking information on social media and putting pressure on border officials.
The migrants’ fingerprints were checked against Spanish and Moroccan databases, while DNA samples were compared with DNA samples from relatives who contacted the police, said Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Atoche, who heads the Crime Fighting Unit and led a team of nine officers assigned to Ceuta.
He said that one of the main reasons for the low number of identifications is the difficulty Moroccan relatives face in legally crossing the border into Ceuta to leave DNA samples at an office set up by the Spanish authorities near the border.