About 600 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa have reached Spain after storming a double border fence, with some throwing excrement or quicklime at security forces to force their way in.
Police said that officers were assaulted with quicklime – which can cause mild irritation to full scale burning of the skin – when migrants charged border fences separating Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta from Morocco shortly before dawn today.
A spokesman for the Guardia Civil police force in Ceuta said the migrants managed to climb over the double barrier, which is covered in small blades.
Some 600 migrants reached Spain in a mass jump of the Spanish border early this morning
Several migrants celebrate next to a Spanish policeman after they managed to jump the border fence between Spain and Morocco
They scrambled over ‘all of a sudden, with much violence,’ and some attacked police with quicklime they had in tubes and bottles.
As a result, ‘more than a dozen police’ were injured with the substance, four of whom had to go to hospital for burns to their faces and arms.
Some of the migrants scaling the fences threw faeces at police officers trying to hold them back, Spanish news agency Europa Press reported, citing unidentified police sources and emergency crews.
The Spanish Red Cross said in a tweet it was called to check on 592 people after the massive charge.
The charity found that 132 migrants had been injured as they scaled the high, barbed-wire fences.
Isabel Brasero, spokeswoman for the Red Cross, said there were no serious injuries among the migrants, but 11 were taken to hospital for stitches to cuts and possible fractures.
Twenty-two police officers in total were hurt in the rush, four of whom were hospitalised for burns.
Several policemen keep watch over some of the 600 migrants that managed to jump off the border fence between Spain and Morocco, in Ceuta, Spanish enclave in northern Africa
A sub-Saharan migrant is assisted by Spanish paramedics in Ceuta. Spanish Civil Guard officers and migrants were injured as security force sources said that some migrants acted violently
Brasero said that after the migrants had climbed over the barrier, they ran to the centre that houses migrants once they arrive in Spanish territory.
The Spanish government did not immediately say how many migrants made it onto Spanish soil.
Sub-Saharan Africans living illegally in Morocco try to get to Europe each year by climbing rows of 6m-high (20-foot-high) barbed-wire fences surrounding Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s other North African enclave.
This morning’s mass charge added to pressure on Spanish authorities from a recent wave of migration.
Today’s scramble over the barrier is the biggest in Ceuta since February 2017, when more than 850 migrants entered the overseas territory over four days.
Some migrants celebrate in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in northern Africa, after they successfully cleared the border fence
A moment of celebration for these migrants, after they managed to jump the border fence between Spain and Morocco
A view of several pairs of shoes left by migrants who managed to jump off the border fence today, July 26
It comes as Spain becomes the number one destination for migrants crossing the Mediterranean by boat, surpassing Italy with 19,586 arrivals by sea to date.
The International Organization for Migration says so far this year that more than 22,700 migrants have arrived in Spain – three times more than in the same period last year.
Ceuta and Melilla, on Morocco’s northern border, have the EU’s only land borders with Africa, which is why many migrants try to reach them.