1,000 Africans try to cross frontier with Spain

Nearly 1,000 Africans tried to cross over from Morocco into a Spanish enclave before dawn Thursday by scaling razor wire fences, but security forces on both sides of the border thwarted most of them, Spanish media reported.

The report was carried by Spanish state radio and television, and the private TV station Telecinco. The Interior Ministry said it could not immediately confirm the reports.

Spanish National Television said the Africans tried to rush the border at several points along the two razor wire fences that separate Morocco from Melilla, even at an area where the innermost of the two has been doubled in height to 6 meters (20 feet).

If confirmed it would be Africans' sixth such rush in just over a week at the borders of the Melilla and Ceuta enclaves. Five of the incident were in Medilla and hundreds also tried last week in Ceuta, which also on Morocco's coast. Five would-be immigrants died of gunshot wounds.

The Spanish government, facing a humanitarian crisis, said Wednesday night it will start expelling illegal immigrants back to Morocco under a 1992 bilateral accord that Morocco never implemented, reports the AP. I.L.