By Jaime Lopez
CEUTA, Spain, July 30 (Reuters) - The Spanish government deployed military units to reinforce police in the North African enclave of Ceuta after migrants in Morocco broke through fences around the city on Thursday, overwhelming the Guardia Civil police force.
State television TVE reported that 2,000 to 3,000 people had crossed. Reuters was not immediately able to confirm that report.
Video footage showed hundreds of migrants swimming or floating on inner tubes from the Moroccan side,
and others breaking through a gate on land and running into the city.
"It was very tough. The police tried to stop us. But our will and determination allowed us to come here," migrant Jadid Zacaria, his hair and shirt still wet from the ocean, said in an interview in Ceuta as migrants streamed through a border gate nearby.
Nine corpses were found on Thursday, local authorities said, adding to a toll of 60 migrants who have died attempting to cross into Ceuta in recent months.
The government said 200 specialised police officers and 60 troops had arrived from the Spanish mainland to reinforce the enclave's regular forces.
The scene was reminiscent of 2021, when some 10,000 people from Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa, many of them minors, entered the enclave of 85,000 people in days.
Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will travel to Ceuta on Friday with Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska for meetings with security forces and local authorities, his office said.
Morocco's Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
MASSES ENTERING
A Guardia Civil spokesperson said earlier migrants were "massively entering from the sea" around the Tarajal breakwater, a border seawall that migrants can swim around and enter Ceuta. The spokesperson could not estimate the number of migrants but said police were overwhelmed.
Many local shops were shuttered. Enrique Serrano, who runs a women's clothing store in central Ceuta, told Reuters business owners were organising self-defence because they believed police resources would be insufficient.
"I'm not opening this afternoon because the situation is extremely tense ... The first thing I have to do is protect my business and my family," he said, adding that when the fence was breached after midnight, hundreds of migrants rushed through in a matter of minutes.
Ceuta and Melilla — another Spanish autonomous city located in North Africa — have the European Union's only land borders with Africa. Both cities periodically experience surges in attempted crossings by migrants seeking to reach Europe.
Images showed some of the migrants shouting, "Long live Spain" as they entered the territory.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT SEEKS STATE OF EMERGENCY
Spain's Socialist government stands out in Europe for its pro-migrant stance, and it has recently launched a programme to provide legal status for some 500,000 undocumented migrants, triggering an influx of applications double that number.
Right-wing parties criticised the drive, arguing it would attract more migrants to Spain, and were quick to blame Sanchez for allowing the situation in Ceuta to reach crisis proportions.
Conservative opposition People's Party leader Alberto Nuñez Feijoo said in a post on X: "The situation in Ceuta is desperate. The government cannot look the other way... because we are facing a national security crisis."
Earlier on Thursday, Ceuta Mayor Juan Jesus Vivas had urged the national government to declare an emergency over the mass arrivals.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on X that the images from Ceuta showed that Sanchez's migration policy was "misguided." A source told Reuters that Italy was exploring reintroducing border controls for people traveling from Spain to Italy, which normally falls in the European Union's passport-free Schengen zone.
'AN EXPLOSION'
Earlier this month, Spain's Supreme Court ruled that migrants intercepted at sea while attempting to reach Ceuta or Melilla cannot be summarily returned under the enclaves' special "border rejection" regime, which allows authorities to immediately send back people caught crossing the border fences.
Spain's government said it was the "exploitation by mafias and criminal organizations" of this ruling that had triggered the migrant surge, not its bid to give legal status to some undocumented migrants.
"It has been a slow trickle since the Supreme Court's ruling, but today has been an explosion," the Guardia Civil spokesperson told Reuters.
The Interior Ministry said it was working closely with Morocco to address the surge in irregular arrivals, having prevented thousands of migrants from illegally entering Ceuta in recent days.
Migrant rights activist Zakaria Zarroqui said people were still flocking to the adjacent Moroccan city of Fnideq in an attempt to cross into Ceuta and the situation was still out of control.
Mauricio Valiente, director of the Spanish Commission for Refugees, which has lawyers working in Ceuta, said the migrants crossing into the enclave were of Moroccan and sub-Saharan origin, including families.
(Additional reporting by David Latona, Emma Pinedo, Ahmed El Jechtimi, Victoria Waldersee and Corina Pons, Francisca Piscioneri; writing by Andrei Khalip, editing by Sharon Singleton, Alistair Bell and Cynthia Osterman)
