Hundreds of people gathered in the Moroccan town of Fnideq near the border with Spain’s Ceuta on Tuesday, holding photos of missing relatives in the hope of locating them. The crowd’s presence follows a mass movement of roughly 72,000 individuals into Ceuta last week, which resulted in at least 88 deaths in the Spanish territory and 11 in Morocco, while dozens remain unaccounted for.

Spanish interior minister announced that about 70,000 of those who entered Ceuta have been returned to Morocco in recent days, and that roughly 2,000 people remain in Ceuta, including at least 862 unaccompanied minors. Human rights organizations have expressed concern that some of the children may have been returned before they could apply for asylum. A video circulated on social media showed a 12‑year‑old boy pleading with a soldier not to be sent back to Morocco; the operation was halted after bystanders intervened, citing Spanish law.

Authorities in Ceuta have opened an office to collect reports of missing persons, and EU interior ministers convened via video conference to address the ongoing situation. Ceuta’s conservative leader, Juan Jesús Vivas, suggested that Morocco may have encouraged or permitted the crossing, a claim rejected by a senior Moroccan official who said law‑enforcement forces were overwhelmed by the volume of migrants and that the “pull effect” was strong. Morocco’s interior ministry attributed the influx to “exploitation of the digital sphere” and the spread of misinformation, while Spain’s migration minister said no prior warning of the scale of the event had been received.

Relatives in Fnideq continue to wait, some hopeful after recent accounts such as that of Fatima, whose brother was able to call her after his phone battery was restored. The ultimate cause of the mass crossing and the fate of the missing remain unclear.