MADRID, Spain: Protesters on Thursday (Aug. 27) set fire to a migrant camp in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta in North Africa and demanded that the migrants be immediately returned to Morocco, reported German Press Agency (dpa).
Television footage from Benítez beach, where migrants have been camping for weeks, showed civilians repeatedly throwing objects into the fire.
Police officers separated the demonstrators from the migrants, who had retreated to a pier.
Earlier, demonstrators had attempted to stop Red Cross vehicles carrying food and water for the migrants.
Up to 80,000 migrants entered Ceuta from Morocco in a mass influx at the end of July, many of them swimming. At least 96 people died, according to official figures.
Most of the migrants returned shortly afterwards, but several thousand remain in Ceuta.
Spain’s conservative opposition has called for them to be sent back.
However, international agreements and Spanish court rulings prohibit collective deportations and require cases to be assessed individually.
Unaccompanied minors are entitled to special protection.
Around 1,500 children and teenagers are believed to be among the migrants, with 500 considered particularly vulnerable, mainly girls, due to be transferred to mainland Spain.
The left-wing government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is under growing pressure over the crisis, with the opposition accusing it of failing to act and abandoning Ceuta’s residents.
The government has also given conflicting accounts of whether authorities had been warned about the mass arrival.
Defence Minister, Margarita Robles, said that the CNI, the intelligence service under her ministry’s jurisdiction, had warned the authorities a day before the influx.
Meanwhile, Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and other government members stressed that there had been no warning of an influx on this scale.
Sánchez is due to address Parliament on the crisis next week. – BERNAMA-dpa
