A crying 12-year-old boy in Ceuta pleaded with Spanish soldiers not to be returned to Morocco, a video filmed by the Associated Press on Monday (3 August) shows. Metres from the border, a Spanish army lieutenant colonel stopped the repatriation after pressure from local residents, who said the child was a minor. The boy was handed over to the Spanish Civil Guard. It comes after hundreds of migrants established a makeshift camp on a beach in the Spanish exclave, which borders Morocco, as local authorities grapple with the aftermath of a massive border surge last week. Spain estimates that 69,500 migrants have been returned to Morocco over the past four days, a figure that surpasses initial projections of around 50,000 arrivals in Ceuta last Thursday.

Thousands of people turned back from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta and returned to Morocco's Fnideq began boarding buses home on Friday, with the operation continuing on Saturday,…

Migrants streamed back across the border into Morocco in small groups after spending two or three days in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, wandering the streets with almost nothing…