International 'tragedy' on Europe's brutal African borders
Melilla (Spain) (AFP) - Just across the sea from the sunny tourist beaches of southern Spain where many Europeans spend their Christmas holidays, a violent crisis is intensifying on Europe's borders with Africa.
Every week, hundreds of Africans try to scramble over the high fences that encircle Ceuta and Melilla, two Spanish-ruled enclaves on the northern tip of Morocco.
Countless migrants and security officers are injured as the Moroccan military, on one side, and a few hundred Spanish police on the other, chase Africans seeking to cross.
Spain has ruled the two tiny territories -- barely 12 square miles (30 square kilometres) of land between them -- for hundreds of years, defying Morocco's claims to them.
Spain insists it has the right to defend the territories and the 170,000 Spaniards living in them -- notably against the threat of Islamic extremists crossing the border from Morocco.
But it is feeling the strain of doing so.
Nearly 4,700 undocumented migrants have infiltrated Melilla thus far this year, the interior ministry said -- up from 3,000 in 2013.
"It is a situation of maximum pressure," said the Spanish government's delegate in Melilla, Abdelmalik El Barkani. ...
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