As many as 16 migrants have escaped from a migrant detention center in Madrid and attacked a police officer, Spanish police said Thursday, Sputnik reported.
The migrants, mostly Algerians, surrounded a guard and demanded him to hand over his electronic key card which let them escape from the center, which is located in the Aluche neighborhood.
Two of them were caught almost immediately, while another three were detained a few hours later. The police are currently searching for the other 11 migrants.
According to the Alternative Police Union, at the time of the incident, 176 detainees were being guarded by only nine police officers.
This was not the first such incident to occur in the detention center. Last year, 46 migrants escaped from the facility, 29 of whom were later caught, while in 2016, 17 people escaped.
According to the latest figures from the International Organization for Migration, Spain currently tops the list of Mediterranean countries by the number of migrant arrivals by sea; 25,101 people have come to the country this year as of August 12.
Europe has been facing a large influx of migrants since 2015, and although the number of new arrivals has gone down from last year, the issue of accommodating migrants and refugees remains acute, especially for such countries as Spain, Italy, and Greece, which often serve as the point of first entry into the European Union.