Moroccan probe finds 23 Melilla border dead likely ‘suffocated’

Morocco state-backed group says 23 migrants likely died of ‘mechanical asphyxiation’ during border crossing attempt.
At least 23 migrants who died last month in a mass attempt to enter the Spanish enclave of Melilla from Morocco likely “suffocated”, the state-backed National Human Rights Council of Morroco (CNDH) has said.
The number of dead – after an estimated 2,000 people, many from Sudan, stormed the Spanish territory’s frontier on June 24 – was the worst in many attempted migrant crossings over the years into Spain’s Ceuta and Melilla enclaves in North Africa – the European Union’s only land borders with Africa.
Adil El-Sehimi, a doctor who examined the bodies during a CNDH fact-finding mission, said on Wednesday that the victims had most likely died of “mechanical asphyxiation”, when a force or object prevents a person from breathing.
CNDH Chief Amina Bouayach said that a total of 23 people had died in the incident, confirming the official toll.
Migrants run on Spanish soil after crossing the fences separating the Spanish enclave of Melilla from Morocco in Melilla, Spain
Migrants run on Spanish soil after crossing the fences separating the Spanish enclave of Melilla from Morocco in Melilla, Spain [Javier Bernardo/AP Photo]
In addition to the deaths, 200 Moroccan and Spanish law enforcement officers and more than 70 civilians were injured in the melee.
None of the dead have been buried and autopsies remain pending, Bouayach told a press conference in Rabat to present the initial findings of the CNDH probe.
Spanish human rights group Caminando Fronteras says as many as 37 people lost their lives. Five days after the incident, Human Rights Watch (HRW) cited “reports that the authorities in Morocco may be organising hasty mass burials” of the dead, along with photographic evidence of recently dug graves in nearby Nador.
Describing the events of June 24, CNDH said large numbers of migrants, “armed with sticks and stones … split into two groups: the first stormed a border post closed since 2018 and the second climbed nearby walls topped with barbed wire”.The dead had been crushed in part of a border post where manual turnstiles allow the passage of a single person at a time, the group said.
Source: aljazeera.com