A fire at the gates of the Tarajal warehouses, where immigrants remaining in Ceuta after the mass crossing have set up a settlement, burned down dozens of shacks early this morning. In this part of the autonomous city, mainly Moroccan families with young children camp, but according to initial reports, there are no injuries. In the burned area, several witnesses told La Vanguardia that the flames may have been caused by candles that a group of immigrants had brought from the monument to the fallen in Plaza de África, which has been filled with them since the beginning of the crisis.
The fire started around midnight. Hours earlier, emergency services had received calls to extinguish other small fires in the city, which were immediately controlled. Several of them were vehicle fires. The fire forced the evacuation of all the surroundings of the Tarajal Warehouses, where hundreds of Maghreb immigrants are still waiting for a place in a reception center.
The surroundings of the industrial estate were blocked by various police units until the flames were extinguished in a couple of hours. The fire, despite how dramatic it appears in videos recorded by witnesses of the fire, did not reach either the structure of the warehouses in the industrial estate or the adjacent buildings.
The police will now have to investigate whether this fire, which has burned at least 40 immigrant shacks, was caused intentionally or accidentally. But on the ground, where workers are cleaning the ashes early in the morning, several migrants lean towards the second option. They say there were moments of great tension after several families blamed other migrants for causing the fire.
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