Express expansion of cemeteries in Ceuta to bury victims of the mass crossing

A dozen workers yesterday accelerated the construction of 118 new niches in the Sidi Embarek Muslim cemetery, on the outskirts of Ceuta, to bury the bodies recovered after the massive crossing that no one will claim. Local authorities have requested that the expansion be completed within two weeks, although the burials could begin sooner. As of yesterday, 38 concrete block graves were already ready. The lifeless bodies of rescued sub-Saharans, around twenty, will be buried in the other Ceuta cemetery, that of Santa Catalina, a Christian one.

The Muslim cemetery, with more than 400 graves, was being expanded before the crisis. But the magnitude of the tragedy, the largest documented on a Spanish border in recent history, has forced express reform. These are individual niches for the majority of the 82 people who died at sea trying to cross to Spain, whose bodies remain in two large cold storage rooms. When the Institute of Legal Medicine (IML) of Ceuta completed the autopsies, only six people had been identified: three through fingerprints and another three through biological studies. All of them men, of legal age and Moroccans. Three of their families, according to police sources, have requested their repatriation, but Morocco has not yet authorized the procedure.

Both the forensic doctors and the Criminalistics service of the Civil Guard collected biological samples and fingerprints from the 82 bodies in case in the future it might be possible to identify more people. The bodies will be buried identified with a number, without name or surname, which will also include the grave in which they are buried. If someone claims them, to take them to their country, they can be exhumed thanks to those identifications.