An aid agency says it has found more than 500 migrants abandoned in the Moroccan desert after being expelled from Spain's North African enclaves

BBC News:

The migrants said they had entered or tried to enter Ceuta and Melilla but were forced back, loaded onto trucks and driven to the Algerian border.

The discovery by the Spanish branch of Medecins Sans Frontieres follows migrant bids to storm border fences.

Six died on Thursday, some apparently shot while trying to enter Melilla.

A group of 70 migrants were expelled from Melilla on Friday, in the first set of official expulsions expected under a revived 1992 accord between Spain and Morocco.

It allows illegal entrants to be sent back to Morocco, even if they are of different nationalities.

Until now, migrants who successfully entered the enclaves have been housed in holding centres or sent to mainland Spain to await expulsion to their country of origin, often resulting in their release.

But an MSF spokeswoman said that while some of the 500 found in the desert had been detained before they managed to cross the Ceuta and Melilla fences, others had been illegally expelled by Spanish police.

MSF said the sub-Saharan migrants had been "abandoned to their fate" near El Aouina-Souatar, hundreds of kilometres south of the enclaves. The group included pregnant women and children.

The agency said staff had treated more than 50 of them for injuries suffered as a result of crossing the barbed-wire fences.

But the MSF statement claimed some of the injuries were also the result of violence inflicted by the Spanish and Moroccan police as "some showed bruises from being hit by rubber bullets".

In southern Morocco, more than 500 immigrants have been abandoned and left to fend for themselves after being expelled from Ceuta and Melilla

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