MADRID— Around 350 migrants tried to scale the fence
from Morocco into Spain's Melilla enclave before dawn on Saturday but none
managed to get across, a Spanish government spokesman said.
اضافة اعلان
Spanish border forces had been alerted at around 5:30am by
their Moroccan counterparts that "a group of 350 sub-Saharan
Africans" were trying to scale the fence near the Barrio Chino border
post, prompting Guardia Civil police to deploy a helicopter to head them off.
"No one got across," the spokesman said, speaking
on condition of anonymity.
Another group of more than 300 people had tried to cross
into Melilla on August 20 but none managed to get in, he said.
Three days earlier, more than 50 did succeed in entering the
tiny enclave when around 150 people stormed the fence. And on July 22, more
than 230 people managed to sneak into Melilla in one of the largest influxes in
recent years.
Spain's two tiny enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla have Europe's
only land border with Africa, making them a magnet for
migrants desperate to
escape grinding poverty and hunger.
In mid-May, Spain was caught off guard when more than 10,000
people swam or used small inflatable boats to cross into Ceuta as the Moroccan
border forces looked the other way.
The influx came during a diplomatic crisis between Spain and
Morocco, with Madrid angering Rabat by allowing a Western Sahara separatist
leader to be treated at a Spanish hospital.
The border breach was widely seen as a punitive move by
Morocco. Although most migrants were returned immediately, by the end of July
some 2,500 remained in Ceuta, officials there said, among them around 800
unaccompanied minors.
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