标签： Africa

A sudden and dramatic surge of irregular migrant crossings into Spain’s North African enclave Ceuta has triggered a full-blown humanitarian and security crisis, with local authorities warning that existing resources have been stretched far beyond their capacity over the past week.

Juan Jesús Vivas, the president of the Ceuta territory, confirmed that hundreds of migrants have successfully crossed from Morocco into the enclave since the start of the week, with conflicting reports putting the total number of recent arrivals anywhere between hundreds and 3,000. Visual footage captured on Thursday shows migrants using inflatable rings and other makeshift flotation devices to swim across the short stretch of water separating Morocco from Ceuta, while other groups simply breached a gap in the fortified border fence and ran across the boundary.

As the EU’s only land border with Africa, Ceuta and its neighboring enclave Melilla have long served as primary entry points for migrants seeking to reach mainland Europe and other European Union member states. The recent surge in crossings follows a landmark ruling earlier this month from Spain’s Supreme Court, which prohibits the immediate summary return of migrants intercepted at sea while attempting to reach Ceuta or Melilla back to Morocco. Spanish interior ministry officials have stated that criminal human smuggling networks are actively exploiting this ruling to encourage more undocumented migrants — most of whom are young people — to attempt the crossing.

Discrepancies persist over the total scale of the latest influx. Spanish national news agency Reuters cited local media estimates putting Thursday’s arrivals alone at between 2,000 and 3,000, though Spain’s national Guardia Civil has not formally verified that figure. Spain’s public broadcaster RTVE, by contrast, has reported that “hundreds” crossed on Thursday, and that more than 1,500 migrants, the vast majority of them young Moroccan nationals, have arrived in Ceuta over the past two weeks.

Vivas has drawn urgent attention to the escalating human cost of the crisis: RTVE reports he confirmed 60 bodies of migrants who died attempting the crossing have been recovered from surrounding waters in recent months. He added that the enclave’s migrant reception infrastructure is on the brink of collapse, with facilities specifically designed to house unaccompanied minor migrants currently operating at multiple times their maximum intended capacity. The current crisis has already prompted comparisons to the mass crossing event of May 2021, when roughly 8,000 migrants entered Ceuta over a period of just a few days, sending bilateral diplomatic relations between Spain and Morocco into a sharp downward spiral.

Despite years of Spanish investments in upgraded border security — including enhanced surveillance systems, reinforced border barriers, and coordinated migration control efforts with the Moroccan government — irregular attempts to cross into the enclave have never stopped. Following the latest surge, both Madrid and Rabat have reaffirmed their commitment to strengthening joint action to address the crisis, including an agreement to process handovers of all irregular migrants who entered Ceuta unlawfully as quickly as possible. Spain’s Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska is scheduled to visit the enclave on Friday to assess the situation firsthand.

The crisis has now drawn political backlash across the European continent, with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni calling for Spain to be suspended from the Schengen Area. In a public post on the social platform X, Meloni said the widely circulated images of mass crossings from Ceuta were deeply striking, and argued that unmanaged irregular migration represents a tangible threat to the security of all European borders. She added that Italy is ready to implement extraordinary emergency measures to protect its own borders and the safety of its citizens.

During her first pastoral visit to Africa as the head of the Church of England, Dame Sarah Mullally, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has stood by the church’s controversial 100 million-pound reparative justice fund set up to address the institution’s deep ties to the transatlantic slave trade. The confirmation came during a somber tour of Cape Coast Castle, one of Ghana’s most infamous slave trading outposts, where thousands of enslaved Africans were detained before being trafficked across the Atlantic to the Americas.

After walking through the windowless dungeons where enslaved people were crammed in inhumane conditions and passing through the iconic “Door of No Return” that marked their final departure from the continent, Dame Sarah spoke openly about the weight of the church’s historical complicity. Touring the site, she said, forced a visceral reckoning with the crimes committed by the institution she now leads.

“We played a part in the transatlantic slave trade. That is clear,” the archbishop told reporters on the trip. “Part of the Christian belief in repentance is about action, so we are putting in place action to support those communities that feel the legacy of the slave trade.” She described being deeply unsettled by the contrast between the horrific dungeons below and a Christian chapel built above them, calling the arrangement a stark, inescapable illustration of how the church was directly embedded in the system of human trafficking.

The Church of England has a well-documented history of involvement in the transatlantic slave trade: its missionary branch operated slave-worked plantations in the Caribbean to generate funding for missionary work, dozens of clergy personally owned enslaved people, and the church accepted substantial donations from prominent slave trading families and businesses. An internal audit three years ago also confirmed that the church’s historical endowment fund held major investments in a company engaged in slave trafficking. That audit prompted a formal decision to establish the £100 million fund, which is earmarked for investment, historical research, and community outreach in regions still grappling with the intergenerational harm of slavery.

Despite the church’s stated goals, the fund has faced significant pushback since it was announced. Critics have challenged the historical findings outlining the church’s level of complicity, raised legal questions about the fund’s structure, and voiced ideological opposition to the project of reparative justice.

Ghana has emerged as a global leader in the campaign pushing for reparations from nations and institutions that accumulated wealth from the transatlantic slave trade, and the archbishop’s visit and reaffirmation of the fund has drawn praise from senior Ghanaian officials. Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said Dame Sarah’s actions send a critical message to global institutions grappling with their own historical legacies. “What the Archbishop of Canterbury is doing in Ghana on her current visit will begin to send the right signals,” he said. “And those who are either revisionists or who are obstructionists within the Church of England are going to start thinking twice.” He added that the Christian faith the church brought to Africa centers the principle that sin must be acknowledged before forgiveness can be granted, a standard that applies to institutions as well as individuals.

Dame Sarah’s March installation as head of the Church of England made history as she became the first woman to hold the post of Archbishop of Canterbury, and her trip to Ghana marks a key milestone in her first year in the role, with reparative justice as the central theme of the Ghana leg of her tour.

On a clear Thursday in Monrovia, Liberia, law enforcement teams set fire to a historic cache of narcotics: 4.2 metric tons of cocaine with an estimated street value of $336 million. The incineration marks a defining moment in the West African nation’s fight against transnational drug trafficking, coming just days after authorities uncovered the largest drug seizure in Liberia’s recorded history and revealed a shocking link to senior members of the country’s own police force.

MADRID – A sudden and massive influx of thousands of migrants crossing from Morocco into Spain’s small North African exclave of Ceuta has forced local authorities to urgently request support from the national government in Madrid to secure the border and restore order.

Visual footage captured at the frontier shows large crowds, overwhelmingly composed of Moroccan nationals but including entire families with women and children, crossing over breakwaters at an urban beach adjacent to the official border checkpoint and moving onto local roads inside Ceuta. Most of the migrants crossing were young men, according to on-site observations.

Spain’s Interior Ministry has publicly committed to upholding the safety of Ceuta’s existing residents and protecting the integrity of Spain’s border, but confirmed that a national state of emergency over the migration crisis will not be declared at this time.

The large-scale crossing follows a sharp 24-hour increase in migration attempts, many of which saw migrants attempting to swim across the maritime boundary to reach the exclave. As of initial reporting, the root cause of the sudden surge in crossings remains unconfirmed.

To understand the significance of this event, context about Ceuta’s unique geopolitical status is critical. Along with Melilla, a larger Spanish territory located 250 miles further along the African Mediterranean coast, Ceuta is one of two Spanish autonomous territories on continental Africa. These two regions host the only land borders between the European Union and the African continent, a position that has made them a persistent flashpoint for migration and diplomatic tension.

Ceuta has been under Spanish administration since 1580, and is currently home to a diverse, largely peaceful mixed population of Christian and Muslim residents, including both Spanish and Moroccan citizens and daily cross-border workers. However, the government of Morocco has never formally recognized Spanish sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla, consistently referring to both territories as illegally occupied lands.

With a permanent population of just 85,000, Ceuta has long been at the center of major diplomatic standoffs between Spain’s central government in Madrid and Morocco’s ruling monarchy in Rabat. Thousands of Moroccan day workers cross the border legally into Ceuta each day to access employment, a routine arrangement that has been repeatedly disrupted by political disputes.

The most significant prior crisis occurred in May 2021, when the Moroccan government relaxed its own border security controls, allowing roughly 8,000 migrants from Morocco and sub-Saharan African nations to flood into Ceuta over a 48-hour period. That move was widely analyzed by global diplomatic observers as a retaliatory action against Spain’s decision to permit a pro-independence leader from the disputed Western Sahara region to receive COVID-19 medical treatment in a Spanish hospital.

Tensions were only de-escalated and full border operations restored after Spanish Prime Minister chose to revise Spain’s decades-long diplomatic stance on the Western Sahara dispute, followed by an official meeting between the Spanish leader and Moroccan King Mohammed VI the next year.

As a key entry point to the European Union, Ceuta is a common target for migrants and asylum seekers fleeing conflict, political repression, or economic hardship across Africa, who hope to ultimately gain residency in mainland Spain or other EU member states. Both Ceuta and Melilla are heavily fortified with border security infrastructure to manage irregular migration attempts.

Irregular migrants that successfully reach Ceuta or Melilla face one of two outcomes: many are immediately repatriated back to Morocco, while those that are not repatriated are held in dedicated migrant processing centers, where they can complete the required steps to apply for asylum in Spain. Migrants attempting to reach Ceuta most often swim from the Moroccan coastal town of Castillejos, a crossing of roughly 3.1 miles, while others depart from the closer coastal town of Belyounech for a shorter maritime journey.

Despite its status as a migration flashpoint, total annual irregular arrivals to Ceuta and Melilla remain far lower than the number of migrants that reach mainland Spain via airports or the Canary and Balearic Island routes. For decades, Spain has seen consistent growth in its total immigrant population: of the country’s 50 million total residents, roughly 10 million are foreign-born. The largest groups of immigrants currently residing in Spain come from Colombia, Venezuela, and Morocco, and many fill critical labor roles in key Spanish economic sectors including agriculture, tourism, and domestic and commercial services.

Four years into Sudan’s brutal civil conflict between the national army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), gripping firsthand testimonies from former child soldiers have pulled back the curtain on systematic abuse, forced conscription, and the hidden role of foreign mercenaries in the capital region of Khartoum. Six former child conscripts held by the RSF spoke anonymously to The Associated Press, sharing harrowing details of their exploitation that align with broader investigations into foreign fighter involvement in the war.

One 17-year-old survivor, who was abducted at 15 while selling cigarettes in Omdurman – Khartoum’s twin city – described being mistakenly seized by RSF fighters searching for deserters, then thrown directly into frontline combat with no prior weapons training. Chained by his hands and feet to an anti-aircraft weapon mounted on a pickup truck, he recalled being left exposed as Sudanese warplanes launched airstrikes. When enemy jets approached, Colombian mercenaries who commanded the post retreated to fortified bunkers, ordering the chained children to open fire on the aircraft. Anyone who tried to run, the teens were told, would be killed by their captors before the bombs could hit them.

The teenager, who still bears shrapnel scars on his head and face, spent 18 months in captivity at the RSF’s Central Reserve Camp in Omdurman, where dozens of child recruits were held. He described being kept bound around the clock – even during meals, when guards poured water over the shackled boys instead of allowing them to bathe. Colombian mercenaries stationed at the base trained the children to operate heavy anti-aircraft systems and explicitly ordered that the teens be chained to the weapons to prevent escape, he said. Too terrified to aim accurately, he never hit a target, he added.

A second 17-year-old survivor, abducted at 15, shared equally devastating accounts from his detention at the RSF’s al-Konan camp, where he said Colombian mercenaries trained him and other underage recruits to handle heavy artillery and operate drones. Locked in a cell unless he was ordered to carry out strikes, he described seeing civilian targets through drone cameras, and being beaten – sometimes unconscious with electric batons – when he refused to fire. He watched an 18-year-old friend who attempted to escape shot dead by RSF fighters, and he still suffers nightly nightmares from the trauma.

These testimonies confirm long-suspected reports of widespread Colombian mercenary deployment alongside the RSF. Rights researchers say the foreign fighters are recruited by a United Arab Emirates (UAE) state-linked contractor and trained in Emirati military bases, supporting the RSF in its fight against the Sudanese army. A UN panel has previously tracked weapons shipments from the UAE to the RSF, though the UAE has repeatedly denied arming the paramilitary group, claiming all shipments were humanitarian aid for refugees. It did not respond to multiple AP requests for comment on the mercenary allegations.

Colombia’s long history of internal armed conflict has created a large pool of combat veterans with specialized U.S.-backed training, many of whom turn to mercenary work abroad due to low domestic pensions and limited civilian job opportunities. While Colombia has passed legislation banning its citizens from fighting in foreign wars, recruitment networks continue to operate, veteran groups report. Human Rights Watch and the private research firm Conflict Insights Group have already documented Colombian mercenary presence in Sudan’s Darfur region, including during the RSF’s 2024 capture of El Fasher, where the paramilitary has been accused of mass civilian killings. A Colombian mercenary who fought in Darfur for six months in 2025 told the AP that hundreds of Colombian fighters were deployed on RSF front lines, and he personally encountered child recruits as young as 13.

The accounts from Khartoum mark the first concrete on-the-ground confirmation of Colombian mercenary activity training child soldiers in the capital region. Multiple independent sources, including a defected former RSF fighter and a senior Sudanese military officer, confirmed to the AP that Colombian fighters were actively training underage recruits in Khartoum while the RSF controlled the city. The Colombian government said it has no official information confirming the child soldier training allegations, but condemned any such abuses.

Across Sudan, an estimated tens of thousands of children as young as 8 have been forcibly conscripted by all parties to the conflict, according to Sudan’s National Council for Child Welfare. The United Nations confirms both the RSF and government-allied militias have deployed child soldiers on front lines, with thousands still held in combat roles. The RSF, which grew out of the Janjaweed militias that carried out a genocidal campaign in Darfur in the 2000s, has a well-documented pattern of repeating these abusive tactics today. International law explicitly classifies forced child recruitment as a war crime, and rights experts say the UAE’s documented support for the RSF could leave the Gulf nation complicit in widespread crimes against humanity.

Both of the surviving teens interviewed by AP spoke from a government-run rehabilitation facility on the outskirts of Khartoum, which housed more than 200 former child soldiers recaptured when the army retook the capital over the past year. Facility staff told AP that multiple child recruits have confirmed Colombian mercenary involvement in their training across Khartoum’s camps. Many of the released children face a difficult path forward: some carry permanent disabilities from combat and torture, while others have been rejected by their families traumatized by the war. Psychologists at the facility work to reconcile families with the boys, who are struggling to process severe trauma and guilt over acts they were forced to commit.

Since the AP’s visit to the facility in April 2025, all children held there have been released through a joint process between the Sudanese government and UNICEF. The UN children’s agency is working to expand efforts to release and reintegrate remaining child soldiers across the country, pushing for all parties to recognize conscripted children as victims rather than combatants. For the teens who survived their ordeals, the desire to rebuild is mixed with lingering trauma. “We have made mistakes,” one boy said. “We want to get out of here to rebuild Sudan.”

In the Spanish North African exclave of Ceuta, local authorities have made an urgent plea to the national government in Madrid, calling for a formal national emergency declaration and military intervention to address a sudden, massive wave of unauthorized border crossings that has overstretched local capacity. Thousands of migrants have entered the tiny territory in recent days, triggering comparisons to a major 2021 border crisis that tested Spain’s migration management systems.

Footage captured at Ceuta’s Tarajal Beach shows large groups of people, predominantly of Moroccan origin, moving past coastal breakwaters and flooding onto local beaches and access roads. While most of the new arrivals are young adult men, the crowds also include entire families with women and young children. Some migrants were heard shouting “Viva España!” to an Associated Press freelance journalist documenting the unfolding situation on the coast.

The sharp escalation in unauthorized entry follows a steady rise in migration attempts targeting the exclave, with many migrants attempting to reach Ceuta by swimming across the border waterway in recent weeks. The current wave of crossings mirrors the chaotic border crisis that unfolded in May 2021, when more than 8,000 migrants entered Ceuta over a 48-hour period, overwhelming local services in a matter of days.

Juan Jesús Vivas, president of Ceuta’s regional government, has formalized the request for national action, arguing that a declaration of national emergency on national security grounds is necessary to address the crisis. Beyond the formal emergency status, Vivas has called for additional reinforcements of national police forces and the deployment of army personnel to secure the shared border with Morocco. He emphasized that extra law enforcement and military support is critical “to guarantee the inviolability of the frontier and citizen safety” for both existing residents and the new arrivals.

Days before making this formal request, Vivas had already raised alarms about overstretched local infrastructure, warning on Wednesday that official migrant reception centers were operating far beyond capacity. Hundreds of new arrivals have been forced to sleep on public streets in Ceuta as the local government struggles to provide basic shelter and services to the growing number of migrants.