Morocco’s Interior Ministry said on Sunday that recent mass crossings to the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla were fuelled by misinformation on social media, human trafficking networks and misinterpretation of a Spanish ruling banning immediate returns of migrants intercepted at sea.

Spanish officials said the death toll from the mass rush of migrants from Morocco into Ceuta last week reached at least 72 on Sunday, as five more bodies were found along the North African coast.

More than 50,000 people crossed into Ceuta by land and sea in an unprecedented surge that began on Thursday at one of the European Union’s only two land borders with Africa, prompting alarm across the bloc. More than 48,000 returned to Morocco within 48 hours and more did so over the weekend, Spanish authorities said.

The Spanish government representative in Ceuta, Miguel Angel Perez, told reporters on Sunday that, in addition to the 72 fatalities, more than 1,000 people had been treated by health services. The situation in the enclave had improved markedly, he said, but more remained to be done to re-establish normality.

Some migrants drowned and others were crushed while trying to climb a breakwater and border fence. Many had been driven to migrate by economic hardship and encouraged by social media rumors.

The number of fatalities was considerably higher than what was announced by Moroccan authorities on Sunday. Morocco’s Interior Ministry said in a statement on Sunday that 11 people had died, mostly by drowning while trying to cross into Spanish territory, noting that it was fact-checking reports on deaths from the other side of the border.

The ministry blamed the rush of migrants on social media misinformation, human trafficking networks and misinterpretation of a Spanish ruling banning immediate returns of migrants intercepted at sea. That statement was similar to the Spanish Foreign Ministry’s comments on the matter.

Moroccan authorities set the number of those involved in the crossing at 40,000, far lower than the figure used by Spanish officials, adding that 1,135 were stopped from entering Melilla, another Spanish enclave.

The statement reiterated that Morocco was committed to countering illegal migration and called for the burden of managing migration to be........

© The Times of Israel