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CEUTA, Spain – A devastating cross-border migration crisis between Spain and Morocco has entered a deadlier phase, with Spanish authorities confirming Saturday that the total number of fatalities has climbed to 67. The crisis unfolded earlier this week when tens of thousands of irregular migrants successfully breached the border defenses of Ceuta, a small Spanish autonomous territory located on the North African coast. In response to the unprecedented influx that has strained local resources and security capabilities, the Spanish government has announced urgent defensive measures: the construction of a new containment barrier along the breakwater fence that extends out into the adjacent sea. This barrier is designed to prevent additional unauthorized entries into the territory, as regional officials work to manage the ongoing humanitarian and security fallout from one of the most significant border events in the region in recent years.

The Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta was recently overwhelmed by an unprecedented surge of migrant crossings, an event that has laid bare the deep economic desperation driving many Moroccans to risk everything for a chance at a new life in the European Union. What unfolded over 24 hours between Thursday and Friday was one of the largest mass border movements the territory has ever seen, with more than 60,000 people crossing into the small territory that is home to just around 85,000 permanent residents.

For many migrants, the journey was rooted in years of unmet hope and limited economic opportunity at home. Twenty-one-year-old aspiring teacher Abdulah Buji was among the first to rush toward the border after word spread that fence lines had been breached. Riding his motorbike from his home in northern Morocco, Buji joined thousands of other people who swam across the water into Ceuta, clinging to the belief that reaching Spanish soil would open the door to a better future than what Morocco could offer. “I am a talented boy. I just want a chance,” Buji told reporters, explaining that after 14 years of education, the only work available in his home country would force him to work 12-hour days for extremely low pay. But his optimism quickly faded once he arrived. Spanish authorities had already moved to seal off any onward travel to mainland Spain, and ordered all new arrivals to return to Morocco or face forced expulsion and detention. Having already lost all his belongings and savings during the crossing, Buji ultimately chose to head back to Morocco, disappointed that the opportunity he sought was nowhere to be found. He is far from alone: more than 50 migrants died while attempting the swim around Ceuta’s border fence during this mass crossing event.

By the end of the first full day after the surge began, roughly 45,000 of the 60,000 arrivals had returned to Moroccan territory. The remaining thousands spent the night sleeping on Ceuta’s streets, surrounded by armed Spanish police and military personnel deployed to restore order, as shocked local residents adjusted to the sudden influx that equaled 70% of the enclave’s entire population. Local officials urgently called for additional security personnel to manage the crisis, and residents expressed growing unease as thousands of mostly young migrant men wandered the streets with no clear destination. This event marks a far larger humanitarian emergency than a similar 2021 incident, when Moroccan authorities temporarily lifted border controls and allowed several thousand migrants to enter Ceuta over two days.

As word of the initial crossings spread across social media, thousands more people across Morocco headed toward the Ceuta border, crowding train stations in major cities including the capital Rabat and Casablanca, Morocco’s largest urban center. Local media footage showed Moroccan police blocking many would-be migrants from boarding trains and buses bound for the northern border region. Researchers note that the mass movement was heavily amplified by social media, where posts encouraging crossings and sharing practical tips for entering Ceuta circulated widely in the days before the surge. “It isn’t clear what triggered the influx, but social media was awash with posts encouraging Moroccans to try to enter Ceuta days before it began,” explained Myriam Cherti, a senior migration researcher at the University of Oxford’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society. Cherti added that many of the migrants she has interviewed have attempted to cross the border dozens of times, driven not by recklessness but by deep desperation. “They’re doing it out of despair, they’re doing it because they’ve tried other ways to build a life and failed, they’re doing it because they feel the obligation that they want to help their families and support them,” she said. “And that’s possible if they make it to Spain and not necessarily possible if they stay” in Morocco.

Thirty-three-year-old Ahmed Karim, who successfully crossed into Ceuta, echoed that sentiment, noting that widespread unemployment and strict border restrictions leave most Moroccans with no legal path to travel to Europe or North America. “They don’t have the opportunity,” he said.

Not all of those who crossed into Ceuta came to stay; many arrived searching for missing loved ones who had attempted the crossing and had not been heard from. Ikrra Khai, a 33-year-old who regularly holds a temporary work permit to harvest crops on Spanish farms, was in Ceuta searching for the brother of a close friend. “I don’t know if he is dead or alive,” she said. “I have his residency card. But I don’t know where he is. I’m searching.”

The reporting for this story was led by Joseph Wilson from Barcelona, Spain, with additional contributions from Danica Kirka in London and Akram Oubachir in Fnideq, Morocco.

Against a backdrop of rising execution rates for foreign nationals in Saudi Arabia, seven Ethiopian death row inmates have risked retaliation to share their harrowing stories directly with the BBC’s Tigrinya language service, smuggled out through a prison phone line to expose the harsh realities of their incarceration and flawed judicial process.

All of the men interviewed are originally from Ethiopia’s Tigray region, where a devastating two-year civil war that ended in 2022 left communities destroyed and economies shattered. Like thousands of other Tigrayans, they fled conflict and poverty, undertaking dangerous cross-border journeys through Djibouti and Yemen in search of work and safety in Saudi Arabia — only to face death sentences for drug-related charges they say they did not fully understand, and were never given a fair chance to challenge.

Habtom, a pseudonym used to protect his identity from retaliation, has spent more than three years on death row in a southern Saudi prison in Khamis Mushait. In a shaky, desperate call made over the hum of shouting cellmates, he described the constant uncertainty that haunts every inmate waiting for execution. “One prisoner cannot comfort another. We have no choice but to cry. We are waiting for our turn, even though we do not know when it will happen,” he said.

He says he was lured into carrying a package by his employers, who promised extra money on top of his low-paid goatherding job. He had no idea what the package contained; he only learned later it was khat, a mild stimulant widely consumed in the Horn of Africa, though Saudi authorities officially list the charges as hashish smuggling. Like most of the inmates interviewed, Habtom says he was denied access to a lawyer, forced to sign an Arabic-language document he could not read, and never got the chance to defend himself in court.

Rights groups say Habtom’s experience is far from unique. Data collected by Amnesty International shows a sharp, alarming rise in executions of Ethiopian nationals in Saudi Arabia: just two were executed in 2023, 35 were put to death in 2025, and 17 have already been executed in the first seven months of 2026 — five of those on a single Monday in 2026. That makes Ethiopians the nationality with the highest number of executions among non-Saudi citizens held in the kingdom.

Dana Ahmed, a researcher with Amnesty International, told the BBC two key factors are likely driving the surge. First, the end of the Tigray war pushed thousands of displaced, desperate migrants to seek refuge and work in Saudi Arabia, increasing the pool of detainees. Second, Saudi Arabia has expanded the use of the death penalty for drug-related offences in recent years. Ahmed added that systemic due process failures are baked into these cases: defendants almost never get access to legal counsel or court documents, translation services (when provided) are inadequate, and the theoretical right to appeal is effectively unobtainable without legal support, meaning death sentences are almost always automatically upheld. “There is a near-total lack of transparency throughout the entire judicial process, from sentencing to Supreme Court review and ratification by the King,” Ahmed said. “People on death row and their families are left in the dark about their fate.”

Nadia Hardman, senior adviser on refugee and migrant rights at Human Rights Watch (HRW), confirmed these accounts, telling the BBC the organization has documented mass trials with no adherence to basic due process, where detainees are sentenced en masse and then left waiting for execution with no information on when their sentence will be carried out.

Saudi authorities have not responded to specific BBC requests for comment on the allegations of unfair judicial processes. The kingdom’s official policy, outlined in public statements released after each execution, maintains all cases follow a clear, formal process: investigation, trial, appeal, Supreme Court review, and final royal decree. Statements add that the death penalty for drug offences reflects the government’s commitment to protecting Saudi citizens from the harm of drug trafficking.

Beyond the injustice of their convictions, inmates described brutal, dehumanizing conditions inside the overcrowded prison. Another inmate, identified only by the pseudonym Desta, said 200 men are crammed into a single cell built to hold just 90. During the day, inmates squeeze together on the floor in sweltering heat; at night, when temperatures drop, they use discarded rubbish bags as blankets because they are not provided with sheets. Guards only open the cell door once a day to drop off food, and inmates who ask questions face severe beatings, he said.

Desta, a former brick-maker who fled Tigray when the civil war reached his hometown, said he was also tricked into carrying a khat package by a smuggler who promised him safe passage across the border from Yemen. When police intercepted the group, the Yemeni smuggler escaped, leaving Desta and the other Ethiopians to face charges. He described the same broken judicial process: forced to sign Arabic paperwork he could not understand, no lawyer, no chance to argue his innocence, and a death sentence handed down after just two court appearances.

For these men, diplomatic intervention so far has produced little tangible change. After 17 Ethiopians were executed in April 2026, there was widespread international outcry: Ethiopia’s influential Orthodox Church Patriarch Abune Mathias called the inmates “voiceless children” living “under the shadow of death” and urged the Ethiopian government to intervene. HRW called on Saudi Arabia to suspend all executions of Ethiopian migrants immediately, and asked Ethiopia to provide urgent consular support.

The issue was raised at a high-level diplomatic meeting between Ethiopian and Saudi foreign ministry officials in Addis Ababa in May 2026, followed by a visit from Ethiopia’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia to the Khamis Mushait prison in June. But inmates told the BBC the visit was rushed, and they did not get enough time to share their cases with the envoy. Within a week of the visit, more executions were carried out. The African Union’s human rights commission has also called on Ethiopia to intervene, but the BBC has not received a response to requests for comment from Ethiopian officials in either Riyadh or Addis Ababa.

In a July 13 statement, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry said it maintains regular contact with Saudi authorities to “pursue appropriate remedies for Ethiopian citizens facing difficult circumstances,” and noted that nearly 2,000 Ethiopian detainees have benefited from royal amnesties to date — though it did not mention death penalty cases specifically.

For the dozens of Ethiopian inmates still waiting on death row, that official progress offers little comfort. Habtom has not even told his family back in Ethiopia he is sentenced to die. “I would rather they be told after I die than now,” he said. His childhood dream of finishing high school, attending college, and supporting his parents was destroyed by the Tigray war, and now he waits each day for the sound of guards opening his cell door to call his name. “We are living in deep fear and cannot even eat the food we are given,” he said. Desta, Habtom and dozens of other death row inmates are now publicly pleading for the international community to intervene to halt their executions.