He depicted the try during which not less than 23 individuals died as “an assault on Spain’s borders”.
“We should do not forget that many of those migrants attacked Spain’s borders with axes and hooks,” mentioned Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez throughout an interview with The Related Press.
Spain’s prime minister has defended the way in which Moroccan and Spanish police repelled migrants final week as they tried to cross the shared border into the North African enclave of Melilla.
“We’re speaking about an try and assault the fence that was evidently carried out in an aggressive means, and due to this fact what Spain’s state safety forces and Moroccan guards did was defend Spain’s borders.”
Authorities in Morocco have blamed the deaths on a “stampede” of those that shaped on Friday as a whole bunch tried to scale or break by way of the 12-metre iron double fence.
The barrier surrounds Melilla, a city of 85,000 separated from the Spanish mainland by the Strait of Gibraltar.
Non-profit teams working in northern Africa and human rights organisations have deplored the therapy the migrants obtained from police on either side. However they’ve additionally directed their blame at Spanish and European Union officers who they are saying have primarily outsourced border controls to Morocco and different states.
Mr Sanchez, whose left-to-centre authorities is attempting to enhance ties with Morocco following an acrimonious diplomatic dispute over Western Sahara, has refused to criticise the crackdown.
Talking on the palace on the outskirts of Madrid that hosts his workplace and residence, Mr Sanchez advised AP that his ideas had been with the households of those that died.
However he blamed the tragedy on “worldwide human trafficking rings who’re cashing in on the struggling of human beings who solely need to search a greater life”.
“I insist, these are worldwide mafia teams that aren’t solely damaging the territorial integrity of Spain but in addition that of Morocco, which is a rustic struggling that irregular migration,” he added.
Mr Sanchez spoke to AP on the eve of internet hosting Nato leaders in a summit that goals to redraw the defence alliance’s technique for the subsequent decade.
Whereas Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will take centre-stage on the two-day assembly, the group will even debate its posture on Africa, the place Russian mercenaries are including to considerations about migration, extremism and the impacts of poverty and local weather change.
Footage uploaded to social media exhibits how a lot of migrants approached a piece of the fence and started scaling it. A few of the migrants hurled rocks at Moroccan anti-riot police attempting to cease them. At one level, the fence collapses, sending lots of the migrants to the bottom from a peak of a number of metres.
In not less than one video launched by a Spanish on-line information web site, Spanish guards can be seen escorting migrants again to the Moroccan facet, a observe that human rights activists say denies the appropriate of refugees to use for asylum on European soil.
