As part of various operations, units of the Moroccan army arrested, on the night of December 31 to Monday 1er January, more than a thousand migrants who, in the north of the kingdom, were preparing to reach the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.
In total, 1,110 people were arrested in the towns of Nador, M’diq and Fnideq during several operations by the Moroccan army and law enforcement, according to a press release from the General Staff of the Royal Armed Forces. (FAR) relayed by the MAP agency.
The army specified that the 175 migrants apprehended in Nador, a border town with Melilla, are from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Yemen, without giving the nationalities of the 935 others.
Clandestine entries
Located on the northern coast of Morocco, the Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta are the European Union’s only land borders on the African continent, and are regularly the site of clandestine entry attempts.
The migratory route to the Canary Islands is the other gateway to Europe, in the Atlantic Ocean, particularly from the Moroccan coasts and the disputed territory of Western Sahara.
The Spanish archipelago is facing its largest migratory flow this year since 2006. As of November 15, 32,436 migrants arrived in the Canaries, a jump of 118% compared to the same period a year earlier, according to the Ministry of the interior.