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Morocco says six die in latest immigrant assault on Spanish enclave

10-06-2005, 18h54
MELILLA, Spain (AFP)

photo
An African immigrant rests his heads on the fencing that surrounds the temporary shelter for immigrants in the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Six would-be immigrants died, some shot dead by Moroccan police, as a mass attempt to storm the fence dividing Melilla from Morocco failed.
(AFP)

Six would-be immigrants died, some shot dead by Moroccan police, as a mass attempt to storm the fence dividing Spain's north African enclave of Melilla from Morocco failed, a Moroccan interior ministry source told AFP.

"Confronted with the extraordinary violence of the attackers, who were driven by the energy of despair, the police legitimately defended their surveillance posts in front of the barrier and six immigrants died," the source said, adding another 30 were injured.

"Some were killed by shots fired by the police and others were killed tramped under their comrades," the source added, revealing police had arrested 290 people.

Spanish authorities in Melilla said they were not aware of any fatalities following the dawn assault.

A similar assault on the border fencing in the twin Spanish north African enclave of Ceuta last week saw five immigrants die amid bitter controversy on whether Spanish or Moroccan police had fired on them.

Two of the dead who fell on the Spanish side of the border bore bullet wounds which Spain insisted had come from the Moroccan side.

The death toll for this summer's assaults on Ceuta and Melilla now stands at a combined 14.

Moroccan authorities in the town of Nador, some 12 kilometres (eight miles) south of Melilla, said hundreds of would-be immigrants had tried their luck Thursday.

"Some 500 illegal sub-Saharans tried to vault the fence at the Rostrogordo crossing, but failed following a large-scale and swift intervention by Moroccan security forces," a Nador prefecture source told AFP.

The Moroccan authorities hailed the collaboration between Spanish and Moroccan security forces as a success while Melilla governor Juan Jose Imbroda told Cadena Ser that "Moroccan forces collaborated, which is what we expected of them."

A series of assaults in recent weeks had seen several hundred make it into Spain despite efforts to drive them back, forcing Madrid and Rabat to address ways to address the immigration issue.

Immigrants insist they will do whatever it takes to reach the enclaves, the only European territories on African soil, and have continued to risk their lives even as the size of the fencing has been double from three to six metres (10 to 20 feet).

Spanish Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso told legislators Thursday that the shots which had hit the immigrants who fell on the Spanish side of the fencing at Ceuta a week ago "do not correspond to Spanish civil guard-issue ammunition" as he appeared to pin the blame on Moroccan security forces.

Alonso added the Spanish "did not use live ammunition" in trying to repel the immigrants at Ceuta on September 29 and was "firmly convinced" that those who died had not died at Spanish hands.

Moroccan sources have insisted their troops were not authorised to fire and that they did not so do.

However, that line of argument disappeared with the announcement of Thursday's fatalities.

"Moroccan and Spanish forces managed to stop them with considerable anti-riot gear," Spain's Cadena Ser radio had earlier reported.

Thursday's mass action by immigrants who have spent months waiting their chance in the forest on the Moroccan side was the first which saw the authorities on both sides prevent them from entering Spain -- although Spanish police confirmed a report that one Malian national had made it across.

With several hundred immigrants having succeeded in crossing the double layer barbed wire fencing in previous assaults, Madrid said it was seeking Rabat's agreement to reactivate a 1992 accord on control of migration, which would see illegals returned to Moroccan soil.

Alonso said a first group of 70 were on the point of being taken back to Morocco by sea.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero meanwhile said Madrid was working to resolve the issue.

"We are in the process of finalising repatriation accords with Mali and Ghana," said Zapatero, adding to existing accords Spain has signed with Algeria, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Morocco and Nigeria.

But Zapatero admitted that as thousands flee drought and resulting famine in Africa "things will remain difficult for years to come if the whole of the European Union does not make a special effort to help these countries."


AFP

 

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