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Join on Telegram Rabat – In an extreme illegal migration attempt 28 migrants have escaped after a Turkey Pegasus plane carried out an emergency landing at Barcelona’s El Prat airport after a woman faked going into labor on a Morocco-Turkiye flight.
Since the attempted escape police have managed to catch half of the suspects, all of whom are thought to have planned to illegally enter Spain. Fourteen of the fugitives are still missing, however.
Among the suspects is the pregnant woman who faked a medical emergency, according to reports.
The woman pretended to be in labor, causing panic and commotion in the plane which allowed some of the suspects to flee the aircraft. Reports indicate that the pregnant woman has been arrested on public disorder charges and is among those awaiting deportation.
Five people are reported to have been placed back on the plane to be deported back to Morocco, while details on the other migrants have not yet been released.
Today’s attempt is not a new occurrence. In a similar incident in November of last year, 12 Moroccans tried to escape a Casablanca-Istanbul flight as it landed in the Spanish city of Mallorca.
A passenger also faked a medical emergency in that incident. The passenger simulated having a diabetic attack, forcing the plane to land in Mallorca. In this case, however, all the passengers that tried to enter Spain illegally were arrested and deported back to Morocco.
Although Morocco stopped more than 40,000 irregular migration attempts to Spain as of July 2022, attempts such as these have spiked concerns about irregular migratory routes to Europe.
Khalid Zerouali, Director of Immigration and Border Surveillance at Morocco’s Interior Ministry said that attempts to irregularly migrate to Europe rose to 11% by the end of July 2022, compared to the same month a year earlier.
