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IMMIGRATION

Migrants storm Morocco-Spain border fence, seven police injured

Over 100 African migrants forced their way into the Spanish territory of Ceuta on Wednesday after storming a barbed-wire border fence with Morocco and attacking police with caustic quicklime, a local official said.

Published: 22 August 2018 16:37 CEST
Migrants storm Morocco-Spain border fence, seven police injured
A man reacts after forcing his way into the Spanish territory of Ceuta. Photo: AFP

In the second assault on the Spanish border in a month, seven police officers were lightly injured when migrants threw quicklime and battery acid as they tried to scale the fence, a spokesman for the Spanish government's representative in Ceuta told AFP, adding that some 115 migrants managed to enter the tiny territory.   

An undetermined number of migrants were also injured in the assault on the border. 

Images published by local newspaper El Faro de Ceuta showed bare-chested African migrants celebrating their arrival in Ceuta, many with bloody cuts to their hands.


Photo: AFP


Photo: AFP

Some waved Spanish or European Union flags as they made their way to a temporary migrant accommodation centre.   

“All my support to those security forces who are facing the migratory challenge in an exemplary way, especially the agents who were injured today,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez tweeted.

Every year sub-Saharan African migrants living illegally in Morocco try to enter Europe either by climbing over their border fences or swimming along their coastlines.

Spanish territories Ceuta and Melilla have the European Union's only land borders with Africa, drawing migrants trying to reach the bloc.   

The assault on the border comes as Ceuta was marking Islam's Eid al-Adha religious feast. Over 600 African migrants got past the double border fence on July 26th, in the biggest run on the border since February 2017.

Fifteen police officers were injured in the violence, some sustaining burns to their face and arms. 

Some 3,100 migrants have entered Ceuta and Melilla by land since the start of the year, according to the International Organization for Migration.   

Over 25,000 others have arrived in Spain by sea, making it the main entry point for migrants arriving in Europe, after Italy and Greece.

CRIME

Germany mulls expulsions to Afghanistan after knife attack

Germany said Tuesday it was considering allowing deportations to Afghanistan, after an asylum seeker from the country injured five and killed a police officer in a knife attack.

Published: 4 June 2024 14:50 CEST
Germany mulls expulsions to Afghanistan after knife attack

Officials had been carrying out an “intensive review for several months… to allow the deportation of serious criminals and dangerous individuals to Afghanistan”, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told journalists.

“It is clear to me that people who pose a potential threat to Germany’s security must be deported quickly,” Faeser said.

“That is why we are doing everything possible to find ways to deport criminals and dangerous people to both Syria and Afghanistan,” she said.

Deportations to Afghanistan from Germany have been completely stopped since the Taliban retook power in 2021.

But a debate over resuming expulsions has resurged after a 25-year-old Afghan was accused of attacking people with a knife at an anti-Islam rally in the western city of Mannheim on Friday.

A police officer, 29, died on Sunday after being repeatedly stabbed as he tried to intervene in the attack.

Five people taking part in a rally organised by Pax Europa, a campaign group against radical Islam, were also wounded.

Friday’s brutal attack has inflamed a public debate over immigration in the run up to European elections and prompted calls to expand efforts to expel criminals.

READ ALSO: Tensions high in Mannheim after knife attack claims life of policeman

The suspect, named in the media as Sulaiman Ataee, came to Germany as a refugee in March 2013, according to reports.

Ataee, who arrived in the country with his brother at the age of only 14, was initially refused asylum but was not deported because of his age, according to German daily Bild.

Ataee subsequently went to school in Germany, and married a German woman of Turkish origin in 2019, with whom he has two children, according to the Spiegel weekly.

Per the reports, Ataee was not seen by authorities as a risk and did not appear to neighbours at his home in Heppenheim as an extremist.

Anti-terrorism prosecutors on Monday took over the investigation into the incident, as they looked to establish a motive.

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