Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande Marlasca refused on Wednesday to put the blame on Moroccan public forces for the deaths and injuries recorded among irregular migrants during the storming of Ceuta in June.
Speaking in a plenary session of Congress, Marlasca said that this “came in response to a more severe violence by a group of about 1,700 migrants and refugees, mostly from Sudan, who made an “unbearable and violent” attempt to cross the border.
“A democratic state cannot in any way accept that its borders and the agents who guard and protect them be attacked by throwing stones, sticks, even homemade incendiary materials, by 1,700 people,” Marlaska said.
The Minister admitted his agents carried out “quick or immediate returns” of 103 irregular migrants who managed to cross the border.
This was the first time Spain’s Interior publically comments on the incident that shook the world and raised worries over the EU’s migration policy.
He offered his condolences for the “tragic loss of human life.”
He also expressed “solidarity” “with the 55 members of the Civil Guard and the Moroccan security forces who were injured that day.”
Law enforcement officers used tear gas and truncheons in the confrontations with the migrants.
Migrants were “armed with stones, sticks, and sharp tools when they stormed the crossing, all together, at the same time,” according to a fact-checking mission sent out by Morocco’s National Council for Human Rights to investigate the incident.
The June 24 attempt has resulted in the deadliest toll ever recorded in the many attempts by sub-Saharan migrants to enter Melilla and the neighboring Spanish enclave of Ceuta.
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