Tragedy and uncertainty in Ceuta: girl reaches Spain, brother drowns, mother missing

A 17-year-old girl from Tangier reached Spanish soil after swimming across the sea to Ceuta, but her eight-year-old brother drowned and her mother went missing in the chaos at the border crossing, according to her account to a photojournalist. She is among roughly 860 unaccompanied minors who remain in Ceuta four days after a large wave of migrants attempted to enter the Spanish enclave.

Conditions in the city remain dire

The teenager said she and her family joined a large group that tried to swim and scale the border fence last Thursday hoping for a better life in Europe. She described how Spanish police pulled her brother's body from the water; she reached the shore but lost contact with her mother and has spent the last four days alone.

“I saw people trampling over dead bodies,” she told a photojournalist through a translator. “Now we are children begging in the streets.” Local residents gave her food and clothing, one woman let her wash at her home, and she later sought help at a government youth center but was told there was no space.

Reporters in the city observed other children begging. Local authorities say about 860 minors remain in Ceuta. Those minors form a substantial portion of the estimated 3,000 to 5,000 migrants who avoided deportation and stayed in the enclave after roughly 60,000 people initially crossed the border during the wave.

Spanish authorities have confirmed 72 people died during the crossings, most at sea; Morocco recorded 11 deaths that are not included in Spain's tally, the Spanish Ministry of the Interior said. Under Spanish law, adult migrants may apply for asylum and face deportation proceedings if claims are denied, while unaccompanied minors are supposed to receive protection and care from the authorities.

Journalists filmed Spanish soldiers escorting a Moroccan boy who cried and begged not to be returned; meters from the border, after local residents alerted authorities that he was a minor and because reporters were present, a lieutenant colonel halted the procedure and handed the child over to the Civil Guard. Many adults returned voluntarily or were returned by Spanish police.

The local migrant reception center, built for about 600 beds, is full and food among migrants is scarce. “The strategy is that hunger, thirst and exhaustion will eventually force these people to return voluntarily to Morocco,” said Ramzes Mohamed Azumik, a local migration activist from the Association "Elin." Many migrants are sleeping on the beach or in the hills surrounding the Spanish territory, with the European mainland visible across the water.

EU officials have signaled an urgent response: “It is time for solidarity,” EU representatives said as the bloc scheduled an emergency meeting for Tuesday to discuss the crisis.

Photo: Xemenendura / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)