A boat packed with around fifty illegal migrants beached itself on a luxury resort in Spain’s Costa de la Luz on Sunday.
Onlookers including a number of British tourists were left stunned as the migrants disembarked their semi-inflatable craft and stormed the Barrosa Beach in Sancti Petri, which features a number of shops, restaurants, and four- and five-star hotels, according to the MailOnline.
“Look how they’re running towards the Sancti Petri Melia Hotel. They’re heading for the all-inclusive Melia Sancti Petri. Look, look, look,” shouted one panicked onlooker in the recording, watching as the migrants surged inland.
European security services have previously expressed concern that illegal landings of this kind could be used to put land radical Islamic terrorists on packed beaches direct from North Africa.
Beachgoing tourists have previously been targetted in Tunisia, where a jihadist with a firearm disguised in a parasol murdered 38 largely British sunbathers in 2017.
The Barossa Beach landing is far from the first of its kind in Spain, which has overtaken Italy and Greece as the number one entry point to Europe for illegal migrants in 2018 under its new Socialist Party government.
Footaged shared online in late July showed a large contingent of illegal migrants landing on another packed beach in Zahora and scattering inland.
This followed almost immediately a separate incident on a nudist beach in Tarifa — less crowded than Barossa and Zahora due to the time of day — with the migrants managing to evade Spanish patrol cutters which tried to intercept them.
The route was well-plied by Moroccan-origin gangsters before it began to be used by illegal migrants, who use fast boats to run arms, illegal drugs, and unlicensed tobacco into Spain, deploying an often shocking level of violence against police and other authorities who attempt to interfere with their business.
“We are in a state of war and we are losing,” lamented one official tasked with dealing with the gangs in an interview with El Pais.
With the multi-billion pound migrant-smuggling business now adding to the authorities’ troubles, it seems unlikely that their workloads will lighten any time soon.
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