Ceuta prepares to bury dozens of migration victims as death toll and identities remain unclear

Authorities in Ceuta are preparing to bury dozens of migrants who died during the mass influx from Morocco on July 30, as the death toll continues to rise and most victims remain unidentified.

The city is awaiting burial permits from a judge, with funeral workers expected to begin preparing the graves once the authorization is issued. 

The plan is to bury the victims in two cemeteries in Ceuta, with more than 60 bodies expected to be placed in the Muslim cemetery of Sidi Embarek and fewer than 20 sub-Saharan African victims in the city’s Catholic cemetery.

Spanish authorities plan to bury the bodies in groups of eight, with each grave registered under a personal Civil Registry code and sealed so that remains can be located and exhumed in the future if a family is identified and requests repatriation.

The process has already faced delays. Three families in Fnideq have expressed a willingness to repatriate bodies, but one repatriation effort was halted because the necessary authorization from Morocco had not yet been issued.

The burial operation comes as forensic teams continue efforts to establish the identities of those who died trying to reach Ceuta.

The latest recovery brought the number of deaths linked to the July 30 mass crossing to 83, after Spain’s Civil Guard recovered the body of a man from waters off Ceuta. The body was found in an advanced state of decomposition and taken to the city’s fishing port for identification and an investigation into the cause of death.

The discovery came two days after two other bodies were recovered from the coast. One was a young sub-Saharan African man who reportedly tried to reach Ceuta by paraglider, while the other was a North African man found wearing only a swimsuit.

Nearly all of the victims are men. Authorities say only one woman has been found among the dead.

So far, six bodies have been identified; three through fingerprints and three through DNA testing. Another three bodies are awaiting confirmation through biological analysis and comparisons with samples provided by relatives.

Forensic teams have collected fingerprints and biological samples from all recovered bodies. After autopsies, fingerprints are digitized and sent to the Civil Guard’s forensic service, while DNA testing is used when fingerprints cannot establish an identity.
Manolo Aparcero, director of Ceuta’s Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, told Cadena SER that the normal preservation periods for bodies have already been exceeded.

Spanish mortuary-health rules normally allow bodies held for judicial purposes to remain refrigerated for up to six days and frozen for up to 21 days. Those limits have been extended in this case for humanitarian reasons, giving families more time to identify their relatives.

But Aparcero warned that refrigeration only slows decomposition and cannot stop it indefinitely.

Moroccan authorities have received the available information on the victims so they can compare it with their own databases. 

A special office has been set up for relatives of missing migrants to file reports and provide DNA samples. Authorities have recorded 19 missing-person reports so far.