Spain’s Ceuta pleads for national emergency after hundreds of migrants swarm onto beach | News World

1000’s of migrants from Morocco have swarmed a Spanish beach in north Africa and overwhelmed police attempting to stop them from crossing.

Migrants are ‘massively entering from the ocean’ into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta on Thursday, the Guardia Civil said.

The region’s government has begged Madrid to deploy the military and shut the Moroccan border, warning a ‘total humanitarian and social emergency’ is going down.

State television TVE said that 2,000 to three,000 youths had crossed into Spain by sea, with some reportedly scaling the border fence.

Images showed migrants paddling from Morocco into Ceuta using inflatable inner tubes and other flotation devices.

Video also showed crowds shouting ‘Long live Spain’ as they rushed into the territory.

The president of Ceuta, Juan Jesus Vivas, said: ‘We’re in a situation of total humanitarian and social emergency.

‘Up to now few days greater than 1,500 migrants, each adults and minors, have come to Ceuta by sea.

‘The reception centres are saturated – there isn’t any more room for anyone in them and in accordance with yesterday’s figures the number of individuals entering is greater than 200 a day.’

Ceuta, together with Spanish city Melilla, represents the EU’s only land border with Africa.

Each regions have faced occasional influxs of migrants trying to achieve Europe.

This rush appears to be on an analogous scale to 1 that occurred in May 2021, when some 10,000 Moroccan and sub-Saharan youths entered the enclave in days

Spain’s Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that ⁠migrants intercepted at sea ​while attempting to achieve Ceuta or Melilla can’t be summarily returned under the enclaves’ special border-rejection regime.

The Guardia Civil spokesperson told Reuters: ‘It has been a slow trickle because the Supreme Court’s ruling, but today has been an explosion.’

Spain’s Interior Ministry said it was working closely with Morocco to handle the surge in migrants.

They blamed people-smuggling networks for exploiting the Supreme Court’s ruling to encourage undocumented migration.

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