According to an official press release, Moroccan army units intercepted more than a thousand migrants in the north of the kingdom on New Year's Eve who were preparing to reach the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. A total of 1,110 migrants were intercepted in the cities of Nador, M'diq and Fnideq during several operations carried out by the Moroccan army and law enforcement agencies, according to a press release from the General Staff of the Royal Armed Forces (FAR) transmitted by the MAP Agency.
The army said the 175 migrants arrested in Nador, a border town with Melilla, were from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Yemen, without mentioning the nationality of the 935 others.
A jump of 118% in one year
The Spanish enclave of Melilla, located on the northern coast of Morocco, is, like that of Ceuta, the European Union's only land border on the African continent and is regularly the subject of clandestine entry attempts.
The migration route to the Canary Islands is the other gateway to Europe in the Atlantic Ocean, particularly from the Moroccan coasts and the disputed territory of Western Sahara. The Spanish archipelago is facing its worst migration crisis this year since 2006. As of November 15, 32,436 migrants had arrived in the Canary Islands, according to the Interior Ministry, an increase of 118% compared to the same period last year.