Madrid - Violent clashes erupted in Madrid between police and African migrants on Thursday over the death of a Senegalese salesman in the mid-1930s after being chased by security forces in the center of the Spanish capital. Protesters said the man had come to Spain 12 years ago on a boat and had worked as an illegal peddler.
MADRID (Reuters) - A Madrid police officer was killed in the mid-1930s by police officers who had been chasing him in the streets of Madrid, police said Thursday.
Protesters said the man, Mami Mbaghi, had come from Senegal to Spain 12 years ago on a boat. He worked as an illegal peddler and sent money to his family in Senegal.
According to Modu, a Senegalese salesman, the municipal police chased the victim from the Puerta del Sol square to Lavabis by bicycle. "Finally he died here," others said.
Riot police and firefighters were deployed in the Lavavis district, in the center of Madrid, which is teeming with immigrants, with some angry demonstrators setting fire to rubbish bins and throwing stones at the police.
An emergency spokeswoman said Mbagi had been found by a police patrol unconscious on a street in Lavabis, adding that the police were "trying to revive him," explaining that he had died of a heart attack.
The spokeswoman said she did not know what happened to Mbagi before the collapse, but many street vendors who were with him said that the police chased him from Puerta del Sol.
Spain is the third destination of migrants to Europe, with an estimated 23,000 arrivals in 2017, while hundreds are trying to reach it.
