🔴 Spain deploys military as hundreds cross into Ceuta from Morocco

Cover image: A file photo showing migrants swimming towards the shore on Moroccan side of border, in Ceuta, Spain on July 26, 2025. © Faro TV via Reuters

Spain will deploy military units to support police in Ceuta after hundreds of migrants breached the border fences from Morocco on Thursday, overwhelming local security forces. Nine bodies have been recovered, a Spanish government spokeswoman said Thursday.

Hundreds of people were converging on Morocco's northern town of Fnideq on Thursday evening, following rumours that the border with Spain's Ceuta had opened, according to an AFP journalist.

Hundreds of migrants entered Ceuta from Morocco earlier on Thursday, joining the 1,500 who had done so in recent days – creating a "humanitarian emergency" that left one person dead, according to city authorities.

"Nine bodies have been recovered," a Spanish government spokeswoman said Thursday. Many of those who tried to reach the Spanish exclave did so by swimming around the border fence.

In a statement Thursday evening, Spain's government said it would send the Armed Forces to help the Civil Guard “to maintain security in the city of Ceuta".

Italy called on Thursday for Spain to be suspended from Europe's open-borders Schengen zone, prompting a backlash from Spain, which summoned the Italian envoy to Madrid.

"The situation is absolute chaos," said Rachid Sbihi, head of the association that represents Spain's Civil Guard officers in Ceuta, who police the border. “It's not possible to give precise numbers, but there are thousands of migrants crossing,” he said, adding that the border had “totally collapsed".

Migration from Morocco into Spain's two north African territories, Ceuta and Melilla, has long been a politically sensitive issue between the two countries.

The two Spanish territories represent the European Union's only ​land border ‌with Africa.

"We are in a situation of total humanitarian and social emergency," said the president of the territory, Juan Jesus Vivas, in comments broadcast on Thursday by Spanish television.

Read morePope defends migrants on symbolic visit to key immigration hub Lampedusa

"In the past few days more than 1,500 migrants, both adults and minors, have come to Ceuta by sea," he said in other televised comments on Wednesday.

"The reception centres are saturated – there is no more room for anyone in them and according to yesterday's figures the number of people entering is more than 200 a day."

He added that ​facilities for unaccompanied minors were operating at 2,400 percent capacity.

Officials could not immediately be reached on Thursday to give more recent figures.

Spain's interior ministry said in a statement that several ministries were "acting in coordination to respond with the utmost speed and efficiency to the situation in Ceuta".

Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska would travel to Ceuta on Friday "to monitor the situation" and meet officials, it said.

It said the government had increased its resources "to guarantee security and control of migration as well as the necessary humanitarian aid, so that no lives are put in danger at sea".

It said the Moroccan government was working "faithfully and permanently with Spain and collaborating closely to deal with the situation".

"Moroccan security forces are preventing the arrival of numerous people who are trying to reach Ceuta from Morocco."

Spain's Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that ⁠migrants intercepted at sea ​while attempting to reach Ceuta or Melilla cannot be summarily returned under the enclaves' special border-rejection regime.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)