On Sunday, Moroccan police, who fired tear gas, pushed back hundreds of people who headed towards the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, an AFP photographer said, after social media posts encouraged crossing attempts.

“In the framework of the struggle against calls for clandestine immigration, 152 people appeared before a judge,” government spokesman Mustapha Baitas told a press conference.

He said a total of around 3,000 people had tried to illegally enter Ceuta after calls on social media, but all the crossing attempts failed.

READ MORE: Morocco stops would-be migrants trying to reach Spanish exclave

A police source previously told AFP that 60 people were arrested between Monday and Wednesday last week for “fabricating and disseminating false information on social media” that encouraged “the organisation of collective illegal immigration operations”.

Ceuta and its sister territory of Melilla, wedged on the North African kingdom’s Mediterranean coast, have long been a magnet for irregular migrants, being the only European Union territories on the African continent.

Those heading on Sunday towards the village of Fnideq, which abuts Ceuta, included Moroccans and migrants from other parts of Africa, including some minors, the AFP photographer said.

According to official statistic, one in four Moroccan young people aged 15-24 is neither in the job market, nor in education or training.

The Moroccan interior ministry has said that in August alone, authorities blocked more than 11,300 attempts to cross into Ceuta and about 3,300 into Melilla.

In June, 2022, at least 23 people died when around 2,000 people, many of them Sudanese, stormed the frontier at Melilla attempting to cross.

The main route out of Morocco for irregular migrants hoping to reach Spain remains by sea.

More than 22,300 migrant arrivals were registered this year by August 15 in the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, a 126 percent increase from 2023.