Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Spain Immigrants Get Through Border Fence
God forbid this ever happen at the US border ...
- More than 300 Africans tore through a razor-wire fence separating Morocco from the Spanish enclave of Melilla on Monday, clashing with police in the latest wave of undocumented immigrants seeking a foothold in Europe.
Officials said an estimated 650 people tried to cross, and about 350 succeeded, in the predawn surge into Melilla, a small, crowded enclave on Morocco's northern coast. Police on both sides were overwhelmed.
"There were just too many of us," said Fofama Issa, a 28-year-old man from Mali, sitting barefoot in an overflowing holding facility after the melee.
About 135 immigrants were injured, as were seven police officers. Some of the Africans threw rocks at police, Spain's Interior Ministry office in Melilla said. The national news agency Efe quoted officers as saying immigrants had bitten them, but the Civil Guard, a paramilitary unit that helps watch over the border, said it could not confirm this.
The surge surprised a Spanish security contingent boosted by army troops after similar rushes last week - including one that left five Africans dead in another Spanish enclave, Ceuta - and embarrassed a government that had been relying on new, higher barriers.
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Blood stained a guard rail along a road that runs past the fence, and the road itself.
At the holding center, already housing more than 1,000 people, the first of the new arrivals showed up in filthy, torn and bloodstained clothes, many of them bandaged or limping in cheap plastic sandals.
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The Africans arriving in Melilla have often made treks lasting more than two years, working their way north from some of the continent's poorest countries, then spent months in the bush in Morocco while waiting to cross over into Spain.
"We were just tired of living in the forest," said Sega Sow, a 19-year-old from Guinea Bissau, wearing a sports jersey and pants stained with blood. He had thick bandages on both arms and his forehead.
"There was nothing to eat, there was nothing to drink."
Sow and others said they chose the spot along the fence because there were no police visible on the Moroccan side.
Soldiers boosted security in Melilla and Ceuta last week after an estimated 1,000 men used makeshift ladders to try to get over the fences last Tuesday. A total of 300 successfully crossed at the northern and southern ends of the 6-mile, crescent-shaped fence. In both places, the two fences are 10 feet high.
On Monday, however, they crossed at a point closer to the center, where the inner fence had been raised to 20 feet.
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