On New Year’s Eve, units of the Moroccan army intercepted more than a thousand migrants in the north of the kingdom who were preparing to reach the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, during different operations, according to a press release. official. A total of 1,110 migrants were intercepted 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.
A jump of 118% in one year
Located on the northern coast of Morocco, the Spanish enclave of Melilla, like that of Ceuta, are the only land borders of the European Union on the African continent and are regularly the subject 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 worst migration crisis 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 Interior Ministry. .