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Dramatic Footage: Spanish Police Block Illegal Immigrants by Severing Their Boat in Half

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It’s a video making waves across social media.

Spanish national police on Sunday intercepted a boat carrying migrants attempting to illegally reach Spanish territory in North Africa, actually severing the migrant vessel in a collision, the U.K. Telegraph reported Wednesday.

And while there were, unbelievably, no serious injuries, the images have caused a storm in cyberspace.

According to The Telegraph, the Spanish boat was part of the country’s Guardia Civil, patrolling the coast off Melilla, a small Spanish enclave bordering Morocco in North Africa.

It was chasing a boat carrying four passengers and attempting to stop it from reaching ground when the collision occurred.

According to The Telegraph, those on board the migrant vessel were rescued immediately. Only one required brief hospitalization.

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A spokesman for a party in Spain’s left-wing coalition government called the incident an “intolerable human disaster.”

Reactions to the video ranged from congratulating the authorities for the undeniably harsh measure to criticizing the extremity of the move.

“That’s how you stop illegal immigrants from illegally crossing into your country,” declared a social media post published by Turning Point UK, a British offshoot of the conservative American group Turning Point USA.

“Everyone has had enough,” wrote Tommy Robinson, a British conservative political activist.

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The migrants’ boat appeared to have originated in Morocco.

According to the left-wing British publication The Guardian, the Moroccan Association for Human Rights “violent and dangerous.”

And Kenneth Roth, a former executive director of the group Human Rights Watch, used a social media post to call the police action “dangerously aggressive.”

Moroccan authorities have said they are investigating the encounter, according to The Telegraph.

Spain has apparently decided there is no need to, the publication reported.

“Spain’s two enclaves on Morocco’s Mediterranean coast, Ceuta and Melilla, share the only land borders of the European Union with Africa,” The Telegraph noted. “The enclaves sporadically experience waves of attempted crossings by migrants trying to reach Europe.”

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Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn't need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
Nationality
American




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