of Moroccan and Spanish NGOs require the opening of an investigation after the death of at least twenty-three people trying to cross the closure which separates the Moroccan territory from the Spanish enclave.
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Never an attempt to enter Melilla from Morocco had never made so many victims. At least 23 people died on Friday, June 24, trying to cross the fence that separates the Moroccan territory from the Spanish enclave, according to the latest count provided by Rabat. Local NGOs, for their part, have listed at least 37 people dead among migrants. A still provisional assessment.
Saturday, nine NGOs, Moroccan and Spanish, demanded “the immediate opening of an independent legal inquiry”. For their part, the international organization for migration and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recalled “the need in all circumstances to prioritize the safety of migrants and refugees, to avoid excessive use of force, as well as than to respect their fundamental rights “.
The witnesses, on the spot, describe a “spiral of violence”. During the night of Thursday to Friday, between 1,300 and 2,000 people gathered in the Nador forest, a Moroccan city bordering Melilla. Most of men, young people, young people, mostly, according to the council of sub -Saharan migrants in Morocco. At dawn, “they have traveled the four kilometers that separate the forest from the Melilla barrier,” said an activist from the Moroccan Human Rights Association (AMDH), adding that they were “armed with stones, sticks, some even hooks and knives “.
The clashes with the police started when the barbed wire approaches. According to Moroccan local authorities, the victims died “in jostles and falling from the closing of iron”, during an “assault marked by the use of very violent methods on the part of migrants”. But “the Moroccan police were also violent, underlines an AMDH activist. Hired at the level of the barrier, the migrants were surrounded in a very narrow space; they were gassed and closed. (…) The Spanish Civil Guard observed their Moroccan colleagues doing the dirty job by crossing their arms “.
pressure mounted with a notch
The evening of the drama, the Moroccan authorities reported 76 injured on the migrant side, 140 among the police. According to the prefecture of Melilla, 133 migrants managed to enter the city.
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