In a new spike of deadly cross-border violence between Russia and Ukraine, both nations have reported dozens of civilian casualties from coordinated drone and aerial attacks, escalating a conflict that has stretched into its fifth year since Russia’s full-scale invasion.
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Soldier kills four in gun rampage in Russian-occupied Crimea
A violent shooting spree carried out by an active member of Russia’s armed forces has left four people dead and multiple others injured in the Crimean Peninsula, the Ukrainian territory illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014, regional authorities confirmed.
According to Mikhail Razvozhayev, the regional governor installed by the Kremlin, the violence unfolded when the gunman turned his weapon on fellow service members first. This initial attack killed one soldier and left a second service member with critical injuries. After attacking his colleagues, the shooter fled to the nearby village of Khmelnytske, where he targeted unarmed civilians.
Three local residents lost their lives in the civilian attack: a 71-year-old man, a 59-year-old man, and a 64-year-old woman. Three additional civilians were also wounded in the rampage, with medical teams working around the clock to stabilize their conditions. Razvozhayev stated that clinical teams are deploying every available resource to save the lives of those injured, though it remains unclear whether the overall death toll will climb as the injured receive treatment.
The attacker has already been taken into custody by authorities, who have launched a formal investigation to uncover the motive for the mass shooting. As of the latest updates, the suspect has not been publicly named, and regional officials have not released any details about which branch of the Russian armed forces he was serving in at the time of the attack. In a public statement following the incident, Razvozhayev urged local residents and media outlets to only share information from official government sources, warning against the spread of unsubstantiated rumors about the shooter’s identity or potential motivations.
Crimea has remained one of the most contentious flashpoints in tensions between Russia and Ukraine since 2014, when Moscow invaded and annexed the peninsula from Ukraine. The overwhelming majority of the international community refuses to recognize Russia’s annexation, classifying Crimea as illegally occupied Ukrainian territory. Russia has since maintained a heavy, permanent military presence across the peninsula, which has increasingly come under attack from Ukrainian drone and missile strikes as the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine stretches into its third year.
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Five dead in Moscow region as Ukraine continues warehouse strikes
The ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict has entered a new phase of escalation, as reciprocal long-range drone strikes carried out overnight Tuesday have left at least nine people dead and dozens more injured across both countries. The exchange of attacks underscores the expanding reach of Ukrainian drone capabilities, which now allow Kyiv to strike targets deep within Russian territory, far from the front lines of the ground war.
Andrei Vorobyov, governor of Russia’s Moscow region, confirmed that a Ukrainian drone attack targeted an industrial site in Novoselki, a town located roughly 43 miles south of the Kremlin. The strike ignited a large blaze at a local warehouse, killing five people and wounding 10 more. Of those injured, seven were listed in moderate condition and one remained in serious condition as of Wednesday morning.
While Vorobyov did not publicly confirm the exact ownership of the targeted facility, both Ukrainian media reports and regional sources have linked the site to Wildberries, Russia’s largest e-commerce platform often nicknamed the “Russian Amazon” for its dominant market position. This attack follows a string of recent strikes on Wildberries infrastructure across Russia carried out by Ukrainian forces over the past several weeks.
Ukrainian officials have repeatedly stated that Wildberries depots are being repurposed to store and distribute supplies for the Russian military, a claim the Russian government and the company itself have consistently denied. Overnight, additional Wildberries warehouses in the St. Petersburg and Tver regions were also confirmed as targets of Ukrainian drone attacks. The company has not issued any formal statement on the Moscow region strike, but did confirm that its St. Petersburg facility sustained damage in the attack.
Alongside its advances in drone development that allow deep strikes into Russian territory, this wave of attacks has prompted an immediate and deadly retaliation from Russian forces. Russia launched its own coordinated series of drone and missile strikes across multiple Ukrainian cities overnight, leaving four civilians dead and multiple others injured.
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service detailed the human cost of the Russian retaliation: an 89-year-old woman was killed and seven people, including two young girls aged 2 and 12, were injured in a strike on the southern Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv. In the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy, a strike on a residential neighborhood killed three people—a woman and two girls aged 5 and 10—and wounded four more. Strikes on Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi left two people injured, while a food warehouse in the central city of Dnipro was set ablaze by attacking projectiles.
In the immediate aftermath of the wave of attacks, Russia’s Ministry of Defence announced that its air defense forces had intercepted and destroyed 320 Ukrainian drones launched during the overnight operation. The latest exchange of deep strikes comes as Ukraine continues to expand its domestic drone production program, building capabilities to strike military and logistical targets far behind Russian front lines, increasingly bringing the conflict to Russian population centers close to the seat of power in Moscow.
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Drugs worth €8.5m seized in Garda operation
In a major crackdown on illegal drug trafficking across the east of Ireland, Gardaí, the national police force of the Republic of Ireland, have seized a large haul of suspected cocaine and cannabis valued at a combined €8.5 million, equivalent to roughly £7.3 million. The operation, built on targeted intelligence gathering, kicked off on Monday when officers pulled over a suspicious vehicle for inspection in County Meath.
Following clues uncovered during the vehicle stop, investigators launched a series of follow-up search warrants at multiple properties spread across both County Meath and neighboring County Louth. It was during these coordinated searches that Gardaí uncovered and seized the full cache of controlled substances, which was later put on public display following the conclusion of the initial operational phase.
As part of the ongoing investigation, two men — one in his 30s and a second in his 40s — were taken into custody at the conclusion of the raids. As of the latest updates from Gardaí, both suspects remain in police custody as detectives continue to build their case against the alleged trafficking network. The seizure marks one of the larger illegal drug hauls recovered by Irish law enforcement in the region in recent months, underscoring ongoing efforts to disrupt cross-county drug supply operations.
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Funeral to be held for Oscar-winning songwriter Glen Hansard
The Irish and global music communities are mourning the sudden passing of 56-year-old Glen Hansard, the Oscar-winning singer-songwriter and former frontman of iconic Irish rock band The Frames, who died last week in a motorcycle accident in Dublin. His funeral is scheduled to take place Tuesday at Dublin’s St Patrick’s Cathedral, following a well-attended public wake held in the city Monday that drew thousands of grieving fans and loved ones.
Hansard first emerged into the public eye in 1991, when he landed a role in the hit musical comedy film *The Commitments* — a breakthrough that came just one year after he founded The Frames, the band that would cement his status as a cornerstone of Irish alternative rock. Over the course of three decades, the band released six full-length studio albums, including the 2004 Irish chart-topper *Burn The Maps* and fan favorites *Dance The Devil* and *For The Birds*. The group even earned a slot performing at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2007, introducing Hansard’s work to a massive new global audience.
His most high-profile career milestone came in 2008, when he and collaborator Marketa Irglova won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Falling Slowly,” the lead track from the low-budget indie musical romance *Once*. The pair went on to release three studio albums as the folk duo The Swell Season, while Hansard also built a successful solo career. His 2016 solo release *Didn’t He Ramble* earned a Grammy Award nomination, and he dropped his fifth and final solo record, *All That Was East Is West Of Me*, in 2023. Just days before his death, Hansard was still doing what he loved most: performing in an intimate traditional Irish music session, capping a lifelong relationship with music that began when he first picked up a guitar as a teenager.
Beyond his recording and performance career, Hansard was widely celebrated for his philanthropic work, particularly his advocacy for unhoused communities in Ireland. In 2010, he launched an annual Christmas Eve busking event in central Dublin that drew A-list Irish music stars including Sinéad O’Connor and Shane McGowan, growing into a beloved seasonal tradition that raised hundreds of thousands of euros for homeless services. Colin Davidson, a close friend of Hansard, hailed the event as “an international Irish institution in its own right.”
News of Hansard’s unexpected death sent shockwaves through the global music industry, with tributes pouring in from some of the world’s biggest artists, including Ed Sheeran, U2’s Bono, and Bruce Springsteen — who shared that he was “heartbroken” over the loss. In the days since his passing, fans have gathered across Dublin to honor his legacy: tributes, candles, and flowers have been laid at a memorial in Dublin’s famous Temple Bar district, where thousands of people have signed an official book of condolence. Fans who attended Monday’s public wake shared personal stories of Hansard’s impact, with many recalling first encountering him busking on Dublin’s Grafton Street decades earlier. Chris James, a fan who first saw Hansard perform on Grafton Street 25 years ago, said the encounter inspired him to pick up the guitar himself, calling the experience one of the coolest moments of his life. Another fan, Danni Rohde, a long-time follower of The Frames, shared that the news of his death still “doesn’t feel real,” echoing the widespread sentiment that Hansard’s passing is an incalculable loss for Irish culture and the global music community.
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Spanish Prime Minister Sanchez fends off blistering criticism within the EU over Ceuta crisis
When European Union leaders gathered in Brussels this Tuesday, one topic dominated closed-door discussions and public sparring: the dramatic migrant surge that hit Spain’s North African territory of Ceuta just one week prior, and the deep divisions it has laid bare across the 27-nation bloc over how to handle irregular migration.
Last Thursday and Friday, between 50,000 and 60,000 migrants crossed into Ceuta in an unprecedented rush, triggering an immediate humanitarian emergency on the small border outpost. Spanish and Moroccan authorities confirmed more than 80 migrants died in the crossing, with many drowning or killed in a deadly stampede as crowds pushed to break through a concrete breakwater barrier. By the time the crisis stabilized, the vast majority of arrivals had been pushed back across the border, but the political aftershocks reverberated across the continent almost instantly.
Within days, 22 EU national leaders signed an open letter leveling sharp criticism at Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and his government’s progressive approach to migration. The letter pinned the Ceuta crisis on a recent ruling from Spain’s Supreme Court, which held that migrants arriving by sea (rather than crossing physical land barriers or climbing Ceuta’s border fence) cannot be summarily deported without formal due process. The signatories, which included leaders from Finland to Malta, argued the ruling amounted to an attack on the EU’s joint migration and asylum system, and called for new mandatory border checks across all sea, air and land entry points into the bloc.
Sanchez quickly pushed back with his own public letter, accusing his critics of twisting the facts of the court ruling. He explained that people smuggling networks intentionally misrepresented the Supreme Court decision to convince thousands of migrants to swim around Ceuta’s existing border fence, rather than climbing it. He also reminded his detractors of Spain’s longstanding record of solidarity with other EU member states facing migration pressures, noting that Spain accepted relocated migrants that arrived at Belarusian borders with Eastern Europe in 2021 and at Italy’s Lampedusa island in 2023. His government has further framed the criticism as politically motivated, pointing out that most arrivals were expelled within hours in close coordination with Moroccan authorities, while receiving almost no practical support from other European nations.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni emerged as the most vocal critic of Sanchez’s response, going so far as to announce new air and sea border controls between Italy and Spain. But political analysts in Rome noted the move was largely symbolic: Matteo Villa, an analyst at the Italian Institute for Political Studies, pointed out that Ceuta’s remote geographic location makes it extremely unlikely that migrants arriving there would go on to reach Italy, and only 2% of all migrants entering Europe ultimately settle in Italy. Observers also noted Meloni has used the Ceuta crisis to push forward Italy’s controversial joint plan with Albania to move all migrant screenings outside EU territory, a proposal that has already drawn widespread legal pushback.
Sanchez hit back at Meloni directly, calling her stance “contrary to European law, humanitarian law, and the principles of solidarity that bind us together.” In a public post on X, he also challenged Italy’s record, noting that since 2021, Italy has received twice as many migrants as Spain: 478,000 compared to Spain’s 234,000.
The public feud between Sanchez and his critics is just the most visible sign of a deeper divide that has reshaped European politics in recent years. Right-wing political coalitions have won elections across much of the bloc by campaigning for harsher restrictions on migration, and they enacted those promises last year through the controversial European Migration and Asylum Pact, which overhauled the bloc’s previous widely discredited migration framework. The new rules grant EU national governments expanded powers to surveil, detain and deport migrants to so-called “safe third countries” such as Morocco, or to offsite “return hubs” located outside EU borders. But the reforms have faced fierce skepticism from human rights organizations, which warn that external detention centers could quickly become overcrowded long-term holding facilities where asylum seekers are trapped in permanent legal limbo.
Michele LeVoy, director of the Brussels-based Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants, condemned what she called political posturing over the Ceuta crisis. “On Ceuta, political games are being played over the lives of people on both sides of the border,” she said, criticizing Europe’s longstanding failure to address the root causes of irregular migration. “We need regular pathways for people to move in safety and dignity,” LeVoy added.
For many policy analysts, the disunity on display over migration highlights a broader pattern of European fragility at a time of mounting global pressures. Alicia García-Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific and the Middle East at financial firm Natixis, argued that regardless of the outcome of Tuesday’s leaders’ meeting, the public feud demonstrates deep damaging divisions within the bloc just as it faces security threats from Russia, strained transatlantic relations with the U.S. and growing economic tension with China. “Europe has shown weakness again,” she said. “Massive weakness.”
Official data from the EU’s border agency Frontex shows that overall irregular migration flows to the EU have dropped dramatically since their 2015 peak, when 1.8 million people crossed into the bloc, mostly via the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean. In the first half of 2026, total crossings fell 37% year-over-year to around 49,000, a trend Frontex Executive Director Hans Leijtens attributed to sustained cooperation with partner countries in North Africa and the Middle East.
Even at the highest levels of EU institutions, there has been little consensus on how to respond to the Ceuta crisis. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen initially expressed shock at the surge and called for the bloc to double down on its hardline approach to border security. But in a shift last Monday, she sent a private letter to Sanchez praising his government’s handling of the emergency. Commission spokesperson Arianna Podesta said the letter called for a formal lessons-learned process to strengthen the bloc’s overall resilience, preparedness and response to future migration surges. “What happened in Ceuta has made it clear that we must do more to further strengthen external borders, for example with vigilant monitoring and where needed the use of physical barriers,” Podesta said, reflecting the letter’s core message.
This report contains contributions from reporting by Samuel Wilson in Barcelona, Spain, and Elara Barry in Rome, with additional reporting from Renata Brio in Barcelona.
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France wildfires reveal hundreds of WW2 shells in village
A weeks-long devastating wildfire that swept through southwestern France’s Gironde region has delivered an unexpected, dangerous aftershock: the unearthing of a forgotten cache of nearly 400 historic World War II explosive shells and munitions buried beneath the forested village of Le Porge.
After burning uncontrolled across more than 42,000 hectares of land for 10 days, the large-scale wildfire was finally contained by hundreds of exhausted firefighters in early August. But days before the blaze was fully extinguished, crews and residents began noticing unusual, repeated explosions that initially were mistaken for bursting gas canisters stored in destroyed homes. Local fire command later confirmed that the intense heat from the wildfire had triggered the buried, long-forgotten munitions to detonate.
Local mayor Martial Zaninetti told French national outlet France Info that over 100 blasts echoed across the area on the second night of the wildfire, a cacophony he described as sounding identical to active war zone combat. The explosions sent shrapnel flying in all directions; Zaninetti confirmed one piece of unexploded ordnance was launched through the wall of a local residence, adding another layer of danger to an already catastrophic disaster.
French media reports later confirmed the unearthed weapons include both French and German mortar rounds and anti-tank shells, relics from the World War II occupation of France that had been stored in buried depots that local officials had no existing records of. Following the discovery, controlled demining operations have been carried out across high-risk areas of Le Porge. While the majority of evacuated residents have now been allowed to return to their surviving properties, multiple zones, including a local stretch of coastline, a popular campsite, and the small neighboring village of La Jenny, remain closed to all entry as clearance work continues.
The wildfire itself left a trail of widespread destruction: official counts confirm more than 180 residential properties were reduced to ash. Images captured earlier this week show local families sifting through the charred rubble of their homes, searching for any belongings that survived the blaze.
This devastating Gironde fire is one element of a wider, two-week wave of extreme wildfire activity that has swept across Southern Europe, with Spain and France bearing the brunt of the destruction. Across the two countries, more than 330,000 people have been forced to evacuate their homes to escape advancing flames. With more than 42,000 hectares of land burned in southwestern France alone, the 2026 fire season already ranks as one of the most destructive the country has seen since the end of World War II.
During a visit to the affected region on Monday, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu publicly recognized the tireless work of first responders, noting that “France has stood firm in the face of an unprecedented crisis.” He confirmed that firefighting operations in Gironde had entered a new, post-blaze phase, and that displaced residents would continue to be reintroduced to their communities in a safe, phased manner.
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EU calls for stronger borders after Ceuta migrant crossings
A sudden, chaotic mass crossing of thousands of migrants from Morocco into Spain’s North African exclave of Ceuta at the end of July has sent ripples of division across the European Union, prompting top EU leaders to demand coordinated collective action to strengthen the bloc’s external border security.
In the wake of the unprecedented influx, latest official updates show that more than 69,500 of the migrants who entered Ceuta have already traveled back to Morocco — a figure that outpaces the initial projection of 50,000 returnees. The human cost of the crisis has been steep: 72 people have been confirmed dead on the Spanish side of the border, while an additional 11 fatalities have been recorded on Moroccan territory.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has called for unified EU action to address gaps in border management, following the crisis. In a formal letter addressed to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, von der Leyen commended the Spanish government for its rapid response to the emergency, but stressed that the incident exposed critical weaknesses that demand collective remediation.
“From this incident, it is clear that we must do more to further strengthen our borders at critical points,” von der Leyen wrote. She emphasized that protecting the EU’s shared external borders is a collective responsibility for all member states, calling for enhanced vigilance, targeted monitoring and the deployment of physical infrastructure to secure high-risk crossing points where necessary.
To address the fallout and map out a coordinated path forward, EU interior ministers will hold an emergency video conference on Tuesday. During the talks, the bloc will work to identify key lessons from the Ceuta crisis, with von der Leyen noting that irregular migration is a shared challenge that can only be resolved through a unified, collective European response rooted in solidarity.
She laid out five core priorities for the bloc to ramp up its action: partnering with non-EU source and transit countries to prevent irregular departures in the first place; bolstering security and capacity at the EU’s external borders; rolling out continent-wide early warning systems for migration surges; dismantling transnational human smuggling networks; and streamlining processes for the safe return of migrants who do not qualify for asylum or residency.
The crisis has already exposed deep rifts within the EU’s 27 member states over migration and border policy. In response to the Ceuta crossings, Italy unilaterally announced a temporary suspension of its Schengen Area border-free arrangements with Spain. The Schengen Agreement, one of the EU’s landmark integration projects, eliminates internal border checks across 29 European countries, serving a population of more than 450 million people.
Italy’s move drew public backing from Finland and Denmark, while Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš went a step further, calling for Spain to be temporarily suspended from full Schengen membership entirely.
Sánchez has pushed back sharply against these actions, noting that Ceuta has never been part of the Schengen Area, and that the crossing rules for the exclave do not fall under Schengen’s jurisdiction. The Spanish prime minister said he holds “serious concerns” about the positions taken by some fellow EU governments, acknowledging that most member states have offered Madrid support and solidarity, but accusing others of launching unfair political attacks driven by prejudice, misinformation, ignorance or domestic political gain.
Spain has blamed criminal human traffickers for engineering the mass crossing, saying the smuggling networks exploited a recent ruling by the Spanish Supreme Court that restricted the government’s authority to carry out immediate deportations of irregular migrants who arrive by sea. As of Saturday, Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska confirmed that the situation in Ceuta has nearly returned to full normalcy. The government is currently developing a new inflatable floating barrier to block future unauthorized water crossings in the region.
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Russia says seven killed and 40 injured by Ukrainian drone hitting busy beach
A deadly drone strike on a crowded Black Sea holiday beach in southern Russia has left seven civilians dead, including three children, and injured dozens more, regional authorities confirmed this week. The incident, which unfolded near the small coastal village of Arkhipo-Osipovka in Krasnodar Krai, has amplified tensions over escalating cross-border attacks amid the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Verified social media footage shared by the BBC captures the drone diving toward a coastal cliff before slamming into the sand below, erupting into a massive fireball as shocked tourists scattered on the shore and in shallow water. Krasnodar Governor Veniamin Kondratyev announced that 40 people were injured in the strike, with 17 requiring urgent hospital treatment. The regional governor immediately pinned responsibility on Ukraine, calling the incident a deliberate attack on unarmed civilian vacationers. Ukraine has not issued any official response to the accusation, and both sides have consistently denied intentionally targeting civilian populations since the full-scale Russian invasion began in February 2022.
The target of the drone remains unconfirmed, with conflicting accounts emerging about what led to it crashing on the beach. Some Ukrainian independent outlets on the messaging platform Telegram have argued the drone veered off course after Russian electronic warfare systems jammed its navigation signal. Multiple eyewitnesses quoted by Russian media reported hearing sustained gunfire moments before the explosion, suggesting Russian air defense units attempted to shoot the drone down before it impacted the crowded coastline. Shockingly, tourists and local residents reported no air raid sirens were activated ahead of the strike, leaving vacationers completely unprepared for the attack. Many shared harrowing accounts of the chaos: one holidaymaker described hiding under sun loungers as the blast hit, while another recalled hearing machine gun-like fire before the earth-shaking explosion. One parent, whose children witnessed the incident firsthand, told reporters their child is now suffering from a severe nervous breakdown.
Arkhipo-Osipovka’s beach has long been a top summer destination for domestic Russian tourists, a popularity that has grown even more since international sanctions imposed after the invasion barred most Russians from leisure travel to Western countries. The strike is one of a growing string of long-range attacks carried out by Ukraine deep inside Russian territory over the past 12 months, targeting energy infrastructure and commercial sites Kyiv says are being used to support Moscow’s military effort. Cross-border strikes have increasingly caused civilian casualties over recent weeks: eight civilians across multiple Russian cities were killed in attacks just last weekend.
Separately, Ukraine has focused recent targeting campaigns on warehouses operated by Wildberries, Russia’s largest domestic e-commerce platform often called the “Russian Amazon.” The latest strike hit a Wildberries facility in the Vladimir region, roughly 100 miles east of Moscow, overnight on Monday. Dozens of the company’s warehouses scattered across Russia – many located thousands of kilometers from the Ukrainian border – have now been hit in these attacks. Kyiv argues that Wildberries depots are being repurposed to store and distribute supplies for the Russian military, a claim the Kremlin and the company reject. Public records show that until recently, the platform openly sold a range of military-related equipment including body armor, as well as dual-use materials that can be adapted for both civilian use and drone production.
The latest civilian casualties on both sides come as long-range strikes have intensified on either side of the front line. Just on Saturday, Russian ballistic missile strikes on Kyiv killed at least nine people and injured dozens more, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko confirmed a residential apartment building in the city’s central Shevchenkivskyi district was partially destroyed, leaving multiple people trapped under rubble. A week earlier, a Russian strike on a residential structure in Kryvyi Rih killed an entire family of 10. Since the start of its full-scale invasion, Russia has launched thousands of strikes on Ukrainian urban residential areas, killing and wounding thousands of Ukrainian civilians.
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Hundreds of migrant children are stranded in Spain’s Ceuta after mass crossing
In the early hours of last Thursday, a massive wave of more than 60,000 migrants pushed across the border from Morocco into Spain’s North African enclave Ceuta, in one of the largest single mass crossing events in recent Mediterranean migration history. Four days later, as most adult migrants have been repatriated or voluntarily returned to Morocco, hundreds of unaccompanied migrant minors remain stranded in the territory, facing dangerous conditions and an uncertain future.
Among them is a 17-year-old girl from Tangier, whose story lays bare the human cost of this sudden migration crisis. She, her 8-year-old younger brother, and her mother joined the thousands of people who attempted to swim around the border breakwater to reach Spanish soil, all chasing the promise of better economic and life opportunities unavailable in their home country. While the teenager successfully made it through the rough Mediterranean surf to shore, her brother drowned before he could reach land. Spanish authorities pulled his small body from the water, the girl told an Associated Press photojournalist, on condition of anonymity to protect her safety as a vulnerable minor. In the chaos of the mass crossing, she was also separated from her mother, who remains missing.
In the four days since she arrived, the teen has survived on the kindness of local Ceuta residents, who shared food, clothing, and a chance to bathe with her. When she sought support at the government-run youth care center, she found the facility already overwhelmed and at full capacity. “I saw people stepping on the dead,” she recounted through a translator, who stepped in because she does not speak Spanish. “Now we are children begging on the street.”
Local official data confirms she is not alone. As of Monday, roughly 860 migrant minors remained in Ceuta after the surge, making up a large share of the 3,000 to 5,000 migrants who have avoided expulsion from the original 60,000 who crossed. Official death tolls underscore the danger of the crossing: Spanish authorities have confirmed 72 fatalities, most from drowning, and Morocco’s separate count of 11 additional deaths is not included in that total. Beyond the 17-year-old’s story, AP reporters on the ground have documented other minors begging for food in the streets of Ceuta, with resources stretched far beyond capacity.
Spanish law mandates a specific legal framework for migrant care: while adult migrants can apply for asylum, most Moroccan adults face extremely low approval rates for humanitarian protection, and those rejected face expulsion. By contrast, unaccompanied migrant minors are legally required to receive state protection and care. But on-the-ground reporting shows enforcement of this rule is inconsistent. An AP journalist witnessed Spanish soldiers escorting a crying unaccompanied Moroccan boy to the border for repatriation, only halting the process at the last minute after local residents and media protested that the child qualified for protection under Spanish law.
Beyond the remaining Moroccan migrants, Ceuta’s remaining population of stranded migrants also includes people from across Africa and the Middle East: Sudanese fleeing civil war, Palestinians from Gaza, Afghans escaping instability, and people from multiple other sub-Saharan African nations.
Ceuta’s primary migrant reception center, built to hold just 600 people, has been completely filled for days, leaving hundreds of migrants to sleep on public beaches and the surrounding hills. Food and clean water are already scarce among the stranded population. Local migration activist Ramsés Mohamed Azumik, with the Ceuta-based advocacy group Asociación Elín, says the current situation is no accident. “The strategy is that hunger, thirst and exhaustion forces these people to finally decide to voluntarily return to Morocco,” Azumik explained.
For the hundreds of stranded minors, the goal of reaching mainland Spain, just across the water visible on the hazy horizon, remains out of reach for now, leaving their lives and futures hanging in the balance.