Photos: Desperate migrants pictured climbing fence between Spain and Morocco

Teeing up her next shot among the palm trees in sunny Spain, this image of a golfer could be taken from the front of a postcard.

Until you look behind her to the barbed wire fence, where a handful of desperate migrants are in the process of scrambling over.

This is Melilla, a town along the border between Morocco and Spain, and one of the key crossing routes for African migrants trying to get into the 'promised land' of Europe.

Fleeing war, persecution and poverty in their home countries, hundreds of these men arrive every month, and will regularly rush the high wire fences in order to climb over.

Many will injure themselves in their frustrated attempts - cutting their hands and feet to pieces on barbed wire, or hurting themselves falling over the other side.

From there, they are scooped up by border guards who watch the fence day and night. They will be taken to a migrant centre in the nearby town where they will either be released - or deported.

Many will simply return, to try their luck again another day. Only two days ago, Spain says 20 men managed to make it into the country after around 200 people began scaling the fences.

Nine were injured, while another 70 spent hours trapped on top of the wire barriers, shouting slogans and asking for help to get into the country.

Spain's Interior Ministry said 2,000 migrants have made it across the border fences in roughly 60 attempts this year alone.

The flow of migrants scrambling to reach Spain's north African territory Melilla is at double the rate of last year, an official said this week after a video showing abuse by border guards was leaked. 

The head of the Spanish government delegation in the territory, Abdelmalik El Barkani, said the number of attempts by desperate migrants to scale the 23ft, triple-layer fence separating Melilla from Morocco has surged in 2014.

In April, at least 25 migrants, many with bloody bare feet, were pictured clinging to the tops of fences for hours as authorities tried to talk them down.

Two migrants clung to the top of a lamp post by the fences. After hours of waiting, one buried his head in his hands. Others grimly held on to the fence, their bare feet visibly bloodied by the crossover attempt.

As the weather turned cold and the wind whipped along the picturesque cliffs of the Mediterranean coastline of this section of the fence, most of the migrants eventually gave in and descended by ladder. They were led limping out of Spain.

At least seven migrants had still refused to come down, including one on the lamp post, when Spanish authorities ejected journalists from the area.

Morocco and Spainhave stepped up border vigilance since February 6, when 15 migrants drowned trying to enter Spain's other north African coastal enclave, Ceuta.

Human rights groups and witnesses protested after it emerged Spanish security forces fired rubber bullets at the immigrants.

Earlier this month Spanish border police at Melilla opened a suitcase to find a sub-Saharan man stuffed inside.

Officers confiscated the suitcase on Sunday after spotting a man struggling to lug a large and oddly-shaped bag at the border near the Moroccan town of Beni Ansar.

When the border guards gave chase, the suspect, a Moroccan national who resides in Spain, carried on trying to drag it away.

Once the officers caught up with the man, they arrested him and opened his load to reveal the contents of the suitcase.

Inside they found a contorted 19-year-old would-be migrant from Mali.

Culled from The DailyMail