Authorities in Spain are searching for a person who used a paraglider to cross a border barrier from Morocco to the Spanish outpost of Melilla. This maneuver seemed to be a novel and inventive technique for someone to cross the border illegally into European territory.
According to Eder Barandiaran, a press representative for the Spanish government delegation in Melilla, one of two Spanish enclaves in North Africa, two locals claimed to have seen the paraglider on Thursday afternoon.
After landing, the flyer fled, which led officials to believe he or she was a migrant trying to get to Europe. Although the person's identity and nationality are still unknown, pictures of the paraglider Thursday went viral on social media.
A scandal has surrounded the Melilla border after 23 people perished there in June during a stampede caused by hundreds of migrants and refugees trying to push their way in. Even when several of the men were on their backs on the ground, Moroccan police assaulted them with batons and fired tear gas.
Additionally, Spanish authorities are alleged to have violated some migrants' rights to seek asylum by forcibly sending some of them back to Morocco.
On the basis of videos and pictures from the incident in June, several media investigations concluded that some of the deaths might have occurred on Spanish soil, despite the interior minister of Spain's repeated denials.
Approximately 1,300 of the more than 29,000 migrants who entered Spain illegally by land or water so far this year did so through Melilla, according to the Spanish Interior Ministry.
Follow the latest news on Google News
