Madrid has resolved to offer ‘total collaboration’ with the Spanish and Moroccan investigations into the recent deaths of 23 migrants during a mass attempt to enter Spain’s Melilla enclave, Pedro Sanchez revealed on Wednesday.
The Spanish premier’s remarks came less than a day after the United Nations denounced authorities on the border between Morocco and Spain for using ‘excessive force’, describing it as ‘unacceptable’.
Around 2,000 migrants, largely from sub-Saharan Africa, tried to scale the fence from Morocco into Melilla, one of Spain’s two tiny North African outposts, at early on Friday, when the catastrophe occurred.
‘I regret the loss of human life and express my solidarity with the families of the migrants who died,’ Sanchez told Cadena Ser radio, pledging his government would work with investigators to understand what happened.
Read Also: 18 Die As Migrants Seeks To Break-In To Spanish Enclave
Sanchez stressed that three investigations had been opened, one by Moroccan prosecutors, one by Spain’s public prosecutor, and a third by the Spanish rights ombudsman.
‘We have to trust these institutions and I pledge the government’s total collaboration with their efforts to clarify what happened,’ he said.
Moroccan authorities in their reaction revealed that some of the victims had fallen while trying to scramble over the fence, giving an initial toll of 18 dead, but later raising it to 23 after another five migrants died of their injuries.
Few details about the incident were available, but Spanish media showed footage of people on the ground, some with bloodied hands and torn clothes.
The death toll was by far the worst recorded in years of attempts by migrants to cross into Spain’s Ceuta and Melilla enclaves, which have the EU’s only land borders with Africa, making them a magnet for those desperate to escape grinding poverty and hunger.
In Morocco, prosecutors are pressing charges against 65 migrants, mostly Sudanese, for trying to storm the border, a defence lawyer in Rabat said.
Spain’s public prosecutor on Tuesday opened its own investigation “to clarify what happened”, citing the “seriousness and gravity” of the incident.