Spanish PM blames traffickers, migrants for deaths at border

MADRID (AP) — Spain's prime minister has defended the way Moroccan and Spanish police repelled migrants last week as they tried to cross the shared border into the north African enclave of Melilla, depicting the attempt in which at least 23 people died as “an attack on Spain's borders.”

“We must remember that many of these migrants attacked Spain's borders with axes and hooks,” Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said during an interview Monday with The Associated Press.

“We are talking about an attempt to assault the fence that was evidently carried out in an aggressive way, and therefore what Spain's state security forces and Moroccan guards did was defend Spain's borders.”

Authorities in Morocco have blamed the deaths on a “stampede” of people that formed early Friday as hundreds attempted to scale or break through the 29-feet iron double fence.

The barrier surrounds Melilla, a town of 85,000 separated from the Spanish mainland by the Strait of Gibraltar.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “shocked” at the images of violence, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.

Dujarric said the use of “excessive force” by authorities on both sides of the border “needs to be investigated because it is unacceptable.”

“States have obligations under international law, and international human rights law and refugee law” which “must be upheld,” he said.

Nonprofits working in northern Africa and human rights organisations have deplored the treatment the migrants received from police on both sides.

But they have also directed their blame at Spanish and European Union officials who they say have essentially outsourced border controls to Morocco and other states.

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