Spanish police confirmed yesterday that the immigrants who died crossing the border into Ceuta the night before were shot at with live ammunition, not plastic bullets as it was first said. They however insist, the shots came from Moroccan police, not their own. (the area where this happened is guarded in one side by Moroccan police and in the other by the Spanish police, in the middle there is a corridor between the fences, 3 of the immigrants died on Moroccan side and 2 in the Spanish side, but according to Spanish police, by wounds from Moroccan bullets), but today the newspaper El Pais reports that the official Moroccan news agency assures that according to ‘a credible police source’ and ‘fellow immigrants’ those dead die from ‘shots from the spanish side’.

Zapatero (Spanish president) has said that an enquiry should now be done about the events yesterday in Ceuta where 5 immigrants died and many others were wounded trying to cross the fence separating Morocco from Ceuta (Ceuta is one of two cities that the Spanish state still holds in north Africa). National NGOs have denounced violation of human rights at this border

This time there were hundreds of immigrants trying to cross the border which is not the normal situation, they normally cross in very small groups, they set up camps in the forest on the Moroccan side, hidden among the bushes, and stay there sometimes for months until they think is the right time to try, and they do it in small numbers or alone…if they fail, they return to the camps and wait for the next occasion, some people have been trying for months, some for years, going back and forth, every time they try and fail they get injured by either police, dogs or the fences themselves, but they return and await the next opportunity.

All these events coincide with a Moroccan-Spanish summit taking place in Seville and an increasing civil unrest in Ceuta.

sara.
there is a lot more info in indy-estrecho( many personal accounts from some of the inmigarntsthemselves) for those who read spanish