Around 6:30 in the morning, Hakim (not his real name to protect his identity) left his house in Barrio Chino de Nador on his way to Beni Enzar to run errands.
The man runs a store in the neighborhood next to the fence with Melilla, through whose border crossing 133 people entered the autonomous city this Friday, an access by force that ended in tragedy on the Moroccan side.
At least 23 died allegedly crushed or suffocated when trapped in a corridor of the border device, according to the Nador authorities.
The Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH) and the group Walking Borders raise the figure to 27 deceased.
When Hakim stopped his motorcycle to stand and watch,
Almost a thousand people were entering the streets of Chinatown ready to stand up to the Moroccan forces deployed at that point of the perimeter.
The crash turned into drama and left a multitude of bodies piled up in the streets of the Moroccan border city.
The residents of Nador describe Dantesque scenes: "Everything was blood, on the head, on the hands, on the feet...".
Mohamed, a neighbor whose house is next to the border crossing, was woken up by the shouts of a crowd spilling into the street from the road that bypasses the village and runs along the road to Mount Gurugú, a rise that dominates the view. to Morocco from Melilla, close to the coast.
"They wanted to get in," he says sparingly.
Between 1,500 and 2,000 people loaded with sticks and backpacks full of stones approached the town, where they managed to burst the closed doors of the border crossing with a shear to enter in droves down the slope that descends to the Spanish side and where they were trapped, surrounded by a pincer maneuver by the Moroccan forces deployed behind him.
As soon as he heard the detonations of the smoke grenades that the agents used against the migrants, Mohamed closed the windows,
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Images of immigrants who have tried to jump the Melilla fence in Morocco
Image of one of the broadcast videos.
The attempt to enter Melilla on Friday was the bloodiest and deadliest on both sides of the fence.
The AMDH has warned against any attempt to bury the deceased in a hurry and without opening a "global, rapid and serious" investigation into what happened to establish responsibilities.
The information was opaque and confusing throughout the day.
Organizations such as the Diocesan Migration Mission (Jesuits) and the Moroccan Association for Human Rights have complained that, throughout Friday, access to the Hassani hospital in Nador (about 15 kilometers from the border) was prohibited, where transferred the dead and wounded.
In the afternoon, and until sunset, Moroccan security forces kept the entrance to Chinatown seized next to the border.
At least 15 buses had been arranged there, where dozens of detainees were stranded throughout the day.
Asking questions or taking notes in the area was reason enough to raise suspicions that ended in harassment by the agents.
More information
The tragedy under the fence of Melilla that nobody could cover in Morocco
"This has been a crime, a crime," Tareq (also a fictitious name) guesses, "they have all been there since noon, lying there on the ground, in the sun, bleeding."
The event has left in the retina of the residents of Chinatown images that evoke a war scene at the foot of the streets accustomed to overflowing with people.
Until 2020, when the border between Spain and Morocco was closed due to the pandemic, thousands of people were employed in the so-called “carrying” or “atypical trade”, a kind of contraband for which businessmen on both sides of the border paid daily wages. miserable men and women carrying packages of up to 90 kilos.
On Friday, the asphalt was covered with exhausted, motionless bodies,
Tareq's stomach turns.
He arrived home, between Chinatown and Farhana, around five in the afternoon, not wanting to eat and hardly speaking.
"It was all blood, all blood", he is frightened, "blood on the head, torn skin, broken feet, broken hands... Those who have not died will end up dying, because they have been beaten a lot".
Tareq had been doing clearing work in an area far from the village since early in the morning.
He did not see how the migrants arrived, expelled the night before from their camps in an open field near Nador, about 15 kilometers from Barrio Chino.
Around 11:00 am, the municipal workers' gang received the order to go down to the district and collect the stones and sticks with which the migrants attacked the Moroccan police, gendarmes and auxiliary forces.
On the other side, it also rained rocks.
Up to 49 civil guards suffered wounds or injuries, according to the Government Delegation in Melilla;
57 migrants were injured and five of them were treated at the Comarcal Hospital.
Those who have not died will end up dying, because they have been beaten a lot”
Tareq, neighbor of Barrio Chino
“When I arrived, they were all on the ground”, Tareq recounts, “they grabbed them by the arms from there inside [the border device], they couldn't even stand up, when they started to get up, they hit them;
everyone on the ground there had broken legs.”
The migrants were boxed in a long corridor usually used to let in the porters who loaded the contraband merchandise.
The set of bars, fences and palisades in that passage of Good Neighborhood (one of the three that can only be used by residents of Melilla and Nador and that remains closed) became a mousetrap.
From Melilla, between 9:30 and 10:00, young people perched on the border fence were observed a few meters away,
some jumping or slipping over the bars of the inverted combs that have replaced concertinas as the crown of the fence on the Spanish underside of the fence;
others had managed to climb to the roof of the border checkpoints and, from there, jump to Spanish soil.
A few managed to get out on the run and be received, along the way or at the Temporary Immigrant Stay Center (CETI), by compatriots, mostly Sudanese, who received them with contained joy.
Hussein, a Sudanese resident since March at the CETI, received his friend —”my brother”, he calls him— with a hug at the gates of the center.
Both shared confinement in Libya and together tried to enter Melilla last March, in the biggest jump to the fence that has been experienced in the history of the autonomous city.
About 900 people managed to access the city in two days (about 500 in a single morning);
more than 2,500 tried it, in broad daylight.
The local government interpreted that entry as a threat from Morocco in the midst of a diplomatic crisis between Madrid and Rabat.
Two weeks later, the Executive of Pedro Sánchez decided to give a historic turn to the Spanish position on Western Sahara and support the Moroccan sovereignist proposal of autonomy for the former colony in the face of the self-determination referendum plan.
Hussein was lucky;
His friend, whose name he does not reveal, stayed on the other side, hidden and sheltered in the forests and open fields that surround the city of Nador, capital of the province bordering Melilla.
On Thursday night, during the San Juan festivities, there were already rumors in Melilla about a possible jump.
Moroccan forces had entered the area of Seluán and its surroundings, where between 1,500 and 2,000 people had gathered, to forcibly dismantle the camp.
The clash replicated the unusual violence that has occurred in recent weeks and has left more than 100 Moroccan agents injured.
"They told us that we had to go and leave the shelter," he says in a note that Hussein has managed to filter from the device in which the 133 young people sheltered in the CETI are quarantined due to covid.
"They said they didn't want anyone in the area for the next 24 hours or they would come back with more aggressive and violent punishment, so we left in the morning to cross the border," he concludes.