Risking Injury and Arrest, African Migrants Storm a Gate to Europe
Early Friday morning, as many as 600 African migrants stormed a gate in the five-mile-long barrier
that separates Morocco from the seaside city of Ceuta on the tip of Morocco — some of them cutting themselves on the fence’s barbed wire or fracturing bones.
17, 2017
For thousands of desperate sub-Saharan Africans, it is a foreboding
but tantalizingly close passage to a better life: A 20-foot-high fence guarding the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, one of only two land borders between Europe and Africa.
The Associated Press reported that around 6 a.m., surveillance cameras near the border had captured 600 people making their way to the fence, some of them gripping tools
and clubs to breach the gate in a bid to reach the Spanish territory.
said that two migrants and three civil guards had been injured
and hospitalized after a clash along a part of the fence, while at least 10 members of the Moroccan armed forces had also been hurt.