African migrants storm a gate to Europe

The New York Times

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.

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.

Even though some of the migrants were exhausted, bloodied and bruised as they gathered near a short-term immigration center in Ceuta, a city of about 85,000 people, they were jubilant.

More than 300 managed to reach the city, Spanish news reports said, instantly exposing them to a world suffused with Spanish culture and peppered with beaches, tapas bars and palm trees.

The others were pushed back by Moroccan security forces. The Associated Press reported that about 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.

The AP 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. Hundreds of others who were injured were treated by Red Cross workers in Ceuta, news reports said.

The crossing Friday was just the latest by migrants determined to enter Ceuta. On New Year’s Day, about 1,100 sub-Saharan migrants tried to jump a high double fence between Morocco and Ceuta. During the violent crossing, the migrants tried to breach the fence with iron bars and wire cutters. Five Spanish policemen and 50 members of the Moroccan forces were injured, including one guard, who lost an eye.