THE BORDER SITUATION is worsening:

Five sub-Saharan Africans have been killed and 50 others wounded as they and hundreds of others scaled tall fences in a bid to enter a Spanish enclave on Morocco's northern coast, officials said.Three of them died on Moroccan territory and two others died in Spanish territory, Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega told reporters on Thursday.

Fernandez de la Vega was speaking in the city of Seville at the Spanish-Moroccan summit that was planned before the tragedy and was focusing attention on the immigration problem.

Earlier Thursday, Jeronimo Nieto, Madrid's chief delegate in Ceuta -- a tiny historical Spanish enclave near the Strait of Gibraltar -- told SER Radio the two who died on Spanish territory suffered their fatal wounds either while scaling the fence topped with barbed wire or from blows that could have come from trampling and stampeding.

UPDATE. El Pais is reporting (link in Spanish) that autopsy results show that three of the five have died of gunshots, with ammunition not consistent with the one used by Spain's security forces. That is, they were shot from Morocco's territory. Maybe they can clear that out in the summit...

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