At least 19 die as thousands of migrants reach Spain’s African enclave of Cueta – Europe live

And, on that note, we will be closing the blog for today .

At least 57 people have died trying to reach the Spanish enclave of Ceuta after as many as 60,000 migrants entered the tiny territory from Morocco ( 17:33 ).

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, called it a “a violation of Spain’s territorial integrity” ( 12:51 ) and blamed on misleading narratives spread by human traffickers ( 12:54 , 13:17 ).

In response, Italy has moved to suspend its free-travel Schengen arrangements with Spain by sea and air ( 18:26 ), claiming it was necessary to safeguard the security of its citizens ( 19:02 , 19:07 ). It is understood it will amount to “targeted, selective checks” on third-country nationals arriving from Spain ( 19:19 ).

But by Friday afternoon, the Spanish authorities claimed that a vast majority of the migrants have voluntarily returned to Morocco ( 16:41 , 18:20 ), with hundreds more going back by the hour as there was no onwards migration route to mainland Spain or the EU ( 14:02 , 15:04 ).

The huge influx, which took place over the course of just 24 hours, overwhelmed the city of 85,000 people, triggered a political crisis for Madrid and led to a barrage of criticism from the US ( 15:25 , 15:29 , 18:02 ) and other EU countries, including broader calls to suspend Spain’s membership of the Schengen area ( 9:42 , 10:21 , 12:10 , 13:52 , 14:52 , 16:59 , 17:38 ).

If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com.

I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.