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Did Morocco instigate the Ceuta migrant incident?

06:55

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Brent Goff
August 5, 2026

Spain has assured its EU partners that most of the tens of thousands of migrants who arrived in its north African exclave Ceuta last week have returned to Morocco. But what triggered the mass migration?

What caused the huge movement of so many people across the sea border between Spain and Morocco in such a short time period?

Carla Hobbs heads the Madrid office of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

She argues that it could not have happened without the complicity of the Moroccan government. 

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