“The Moroccan police beat us and killed our friends,” recounts Amir, one of the survivors of last Friday’s massacre along the border of Spain’s North African enclave Melilla. The death toll remains disputed, but according to international NGOs at least thirty-seven people were killed as Moroccan security forces beat, stoned, and tear-gassed the approximately 1,500 immigrants that rushed toward the border fence — one of the European Union’s only land borders with an African nation. Some were killed in a crush along the border perimeter, as police executed a pincer movement that trapped hundreds in a trench; video footage shows dozens more falling from the six-meter-high fence as Moroccan police tear-gassed and shot rounds of rubber bullets at those climbing it.

According to the local Nador Human Rights Association, a number of further fatalities occurred because the critically injured were left for up to ten hours in the sun and heat without medical attention. Shocking video released on the organization’s social media platforms shows hundreds of crammed bodies piled up against each other and surrounded by riot police, in which it is difficult to distinguish the injured and exhausted from the dead. Some are handcuffed, others lie motionless, while in another video the police repeatedly beat those lying on the ground.

Further footage published by Público newspaper shows Spanish military police and Moroccan security services working together in coordinated baton charges against groups of immigrants who had managed to scale the fence. The latter raised serious questions over the exact involvement of the Spanish police and interior ministry in the management and oversight of the operation. It also opened up yet another rift in the country’s ruling broad-left coalition, not least given that Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), defended the police’s response.