MADRID (AP) – Something seems wrong with the guard investigating sealed bags of toxic ash in the port of Melilla, one of the two small areas in Spain in North Africa. So he pulled out a knife, cut open the bag and found a motionless leg, confirming his suspicion that a person was inside.
He lifts and drops the leg several times, without reaction. A few moments passed. Suddenly the leg pulls back, and a young man emerges from the ashes – scared and disoriented, but alive.
The disturbing scene from a video published by the Spanish Civil Guard on Monday highlighted the great lengths and risks that migrants and asylum seekers take. in their desperate efforts to reach Europe.
The survivor was among 41 people on Friday who hid under cargo in Melilla’s port area and tried to sneak aboard a ship that would take them across the Mediterranean to mainland Spain.
Four of them were buried in burial containers under glass bottles, some of which were broken with sharp edges.
Surrounded by Morocco, the small enclaves of Melilla and nearby Ceuta have been a target for many African migrants for many years. But the two areas fall outside the Schengen area of free mobility in much of Europe, so many of them are trapped in their attempt to reach European soil.
The port of Melilla, where trucks and freighters take a trip to Spain that can take up to seven hours, offers many people a way to escape. Some try to enter the fenced area of the harbor by swimming there or hiding under vehicles, jumping on them as they slow down or stopping at the gate of the harbor.
Others try to climb the fences and walls, sometimes they fall seriously injured.
Using search dogs and microphones to detect heartbeats, police often find people hiding among the cargo, from containers to cement mixers. This year alone, the Civil Guard said it had identified 1,781 migrants who had breached the security border of Melilla Harbor; last year the number was 11,700.
However, discoveries like those of last week are disturbing to the most experienced officers.
“We will never get used to it,” said Juan Antonio Martín, a spokesman for the Melilla Civil Guard.
Because the border between Spain’s North African territories and Morocco has been closed since the pandemic began in March, it is more difficult for migrants to slip in. According to the Spanish Interior Ministry, nearly 1,500 people moved to Melilla illegally last year, up from more than 5,800 in 2019.
But those who tried to leave Melilla last week were already in the enclave, Martin said. They could not take the passenger boats or the flights to reach the mainland, either because they did not have travel documents, or because they entered Spain illegally in the first place.
Their nationality was not disclosed, but the spokesman said most were of Moroccan origin.
While Morocco’s closure of the land border with Ceuta and Melilla has come on the heels of years of tightening of border security, which has already led to a major decline in illegal crossings, Spain’s Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean as the main landing point. stepped forward. for people fleeing North and West Africa to Europe.
Last year, about 23,000 people reached the archipelago, most of whom were pulled out of the waters by the Spanish Maritime Rescue Service, and more than 500 died or disappeared in the attempt.
And even there, rescuers sometimes face the unthinkable. In December, the Spanish El País newspaper reported how a 14-year-old from Nigeria clung to an oil tanker’s rudder for two weeks before being found by a patrol boat near the port of Las Palmas, island of Gran Canaria.
—-
Brito reported from Barcelona, Spain.