Spain to put containment fence on Ceuta’s sea border with Morocco after thousands rush through

Spain announced it was installing a 500-meter-long containment barrier on the sea border between its North African territory of Ceuta and neighboring Morocco.

CEUTA, Spain — Spain announced it was installing a 500-meter-long containment barrier on the sea border between its North African territory of Ceuta and neighboring Morocco after between 50,000 and 60,000 migrants breached the frontier earlier this week.

The death toll climbed to 67, including some who drowned and others who were killed in a stampede to cross a breakwater barrier, the Spanish government said Saturday. Authorities in Ceuta told Sky News on Saturday that 86 people have died.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez slammed the reaction of some other European Union leaders to the events in Ceuta, saying calls for Spain to be suspended from the EU’s borderless Schengen zone were “driven by prejudice, fake news, ignorance, or political interest.”

A handful of exhausted migrants who swam to Ceuta’s urban Tarajal beach Saturday morning were met by soldiers who escorted them back across the border. Spain’s interior ministry says the majority of those who entered the territory have already returned to Morocco.

“We are relentless against those who break the law,” Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told journalists in Ceuta on Saturday.