Rabat – Ilias, a 15-year-old Moroccan lost his life on February 14 in the port of Ceuta.
Originally from Martil, he had been living in Ceuta for two months “in an attempt to hide inside a vehicle and migrate to Europe,” according to El Faro de Ceuta.
Ilis “was seriously wounded in the head and died almost instantly” despite the presence of the emergency services, the newspaper recounted.
According to the local Spanish authorities, the boy died as a result of a collision between a truck and a nacelle carrying an excavator.
Ceuta’s Civil Guardia opened an investigation on the tragedy and the port cameras will be examined to find out its circumstances.
“The deceased is said to have made several attempts to travel to the peninsula in this way,” said El Faro de Ceuta.
The Caballas coalition, a left-wing Spanish party, convened for one minute of silence before the city hall.
Mohamed Ali, the spokesman for the party, criticized local institutions.
“We believe that the minute of silence should serve in this city as a turning point for a change in mentality, not only of citizens but also of political institutions in the face of the phenomenon of unaccompanied foreign minors,” said Ali.
“No one denies that more resources are needed or that the State should be more involved. Criminalizing this group, which is only trying to build a better future for itself, is unacceptable.”
“We have to blame the institutions that have created a hostile climate towards these minors,” he added.
Last month, the party was said to plan to propose at the Assembly of Ceuta a parliamentary initiative to urge the Government of Spain to “negotiate a new Good Neighbor Treaty with Morocco,” according to Europa Press.
The treaty should “defend” both territories of the process of “economic suffocation” that they consider Morocco has “devised on them to advance its annexationist” demands, the party said.
Among other things, the text of the proposal calls for is creating new coordination mechanisms between the two countries to address “the phenomenon of unaccompanied foreign minors.”
This is the second immigrant death in the port of Ceuta in less than a year.
In June, a teenager, identified by his friends as Omar ‘Susi,’ 16 years old, was crushed to death by a truck. The Civil Guard arrested two drivers involved in the fatal incident, one of them for homicide, said El Faro.
In October, two hundred migrants attempted to jump the border between Morocco and Melilla. One of the migrants died of a heart attack.
In July, at least 600 migrants crossed the border from Morocco to the Spanish enclave Ceuta.
In 2018, almost all of the 3,344 unaccompanied minors from the MENA region who entered Ceuta were Moroccan. The number of unaccompanied and underage migrants from MENA crossing to the Ceuta border increased by over 400 percent compared to in 2017.
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