15 dead as thousands of migrants breach Spain’s Ceuta border from Morocco, troops deployed

New Delhi: Spain is sending troops to bolster security in its North African enclave of Ceuta after thousands of migrants swam across from Morocco on Thursday. At least 15 migrants are reported to have died of drowning while trying to reach the Spanish shores.

The surge began building through the week before boiling over on Thursday, when border controls at the Tarajal crossing apparently broke down altogether. State broadcaster TVE put the figure at between 2,000 and 3,000 people entering that day alone, while Ceuta’s regional government said 1,500 to 2,000 had crossed over the preceding ten days.

Local officials had already appealed to Madrid for help after a recent rise in attempted crossings, but Thursday’s scenes went well beyond what authorities had been bracing for. A Guardia Civil (Spanish civil guard) spokesperson said migrants were “massively entering from the sea” through the Tarajal breakwater but could not offer any estimate of numbers.

Video footage showed crowds, mostly young Moroccan men though also families with women and children, moving around the breakwaters at Tarajal beach and onto local roads. Some shouted “Viva Espana!” to a photographer working for the Associated Press, the agency said.

Border ‘totally collapsed’, says civil guard

Rachid Sbihi, head of the association representing Spain’s civil guard officers who police the Ceuta border, described the scenes as “absolute chaos”. He said precise numbers were impossible to establish but that the border had “totally collapsed” under the weight of arrivals.

Achraf Maimouni of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights called the situation “exceptional”, saying the Tarajal crossing had opened under unusual circumstances that morning. Moroccan authorities have not publicly explained the sudden loosening of control at the frontier, and the country’s interior ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

The government delegation in Ceuta has not detailed the circumstances of the deaths, though bodies were seen floating in the water near the crossing point. Dozens of migrants have died this year attempting to reach Ceuta, according to local authorities.

Echoes of 2021 crisis

Migrant rights activist Zakaria Zarroqui told Reuters the scale of the surge recalled May 2021, when roughly 8,000 to 10,000 Moroccan and sub-Saharan youths entered the enclave within days after Rabat briefly eased its side of the border. “The situation remains out of control as we speak,” he said, adding that people were still gathering in the Moroccan border town of Fnideq to attempt the crossing.

Ceuta’s interior ministry figures show close to 3,000 migrants had already entered by land or sea this year as of July 15, before this week’s spike. Officials note that Spanish law does not classify migration surges as a threat to national security, which is the technical reason cited for refusing to declare a national emergency despite repeated requests from Ceuta’s regional government.

Sanchez to visit as army moves in

Madrid announced on Thursday evening that the armed forces would reinforce the Civil Guard to “maintain security in the city of Ceuta”. Prime minister Pedro Sanchez was due to travel to the enclave on Friday alongside the interior minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, to assess the response on the ground.

The Spanish and Moroccan governments said they had agreed to work together to return, as quickly as possible, everyone who had entered Ceuta illegally. The interior ministry, however, rejected calls from Ceuta’s regional government to declare a national emergency, arguing that such a measure does not extend to migration crises, while promising additional resources instead.

Ceuta’s regional president has pressed Madrid for troops on the ground, warning that reception centres in the tiny territory are overwhelmed.

Court ruling under scrutiny

Authorities in Ceuta have linked the spike in crossings to a Spanish supreme court ruling earlier in July that bars the summary return of migrants intercepted at sea while trying to reach Ceuta or Melilla, Spain’s other North African enclave. The ruling does not cover those who cross by land, including by scaling the border fence, and applies specifically to migrants stopped by sea.

A Civil Guard spokesperson told Reuters that arrivals had been “a slow trickle” since the ruling but that Thursday had brought “an explosion”. Spain’s government has pointed the finger instead at smuggling networks, saying it is the “exploitation by mafias and criminal organizations” of the ruling – rather than the judgment itself – that has driven the surge.

Some Moroccan activists remain sceptical of that explanation. They argue most migrants attempting the crossing would have had no knowledge of a foreign court’s legal reasoning.

Ripples beyond Spain

The episode has already stirred anxiety elsewhere in Europe. Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, threatened to suspend her country’s obligations under the Schengen open-border arrangement with Spain, invoking the need to “defend our borders and ensure the safety of our citizens” – despite Italy sharing no land border with Spain.

Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s two enclaves on the North African coast, remain the European Union’s only land borders with Africa. Spanish authorities do not grant Moroccan nationals asylum status, and legal residence is generally reserved for unaccompanied minors placed under state supervision – a policy gap that has repeatedly fuelled friction along this frontier over the past decade.