A Cameroonian migrant identified as Felix is reported to have been killed after Moroccan officers of the Auxiliary Forces discovered their camp in the forest outside the Northern city of Tangier, Morocco Friday July 31 amid celebrations marking the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha.

In a desperate urge to get to Europe, Cameroonian migrant, Felix met his doom Friday July 31 in Morocco, last step for migrants hoping to enter the Europe Union by sea.

Caught by Moroccan officers of the Auxiliary Forces in their migrant encampment in a forest outside the Northern city of Tangier, Felix will die following a minor clash with the said officers.

Videos of his body carried on a makeshift stretcher accompanied by several police officers will later on go viral.

According to a testimony from another Cameroonian migrant present in the camp by the time the officers found them, he and other migrants were hiding on the shore of the Strait of Gibraltar, less than 25km from the coast of Spain when the officers of the Auxiliary Forces found them.

“We were in the forest, at the edge of the water. We were hiding there. The police officers were searching in the forest and they found us, but we didn’t make any noise. They told us to calm down and come out of the forest. They took our shoes off and made us get out. Then they started to confiscate everything that we had. They took everything. They went through our phones and we said, “Please, leave us our phones at least so we can call our families. The one good thing we have, the one thing we have, is our phones. You took everything, at least leave us that.” They said “No.”

“We got down on our knees. They said they were going to take everything and we resisted. We pushed back with boat paddles and they were hitting us with knives, each one had two knives in their hands. We pushed them back. They ran away from the paddles. We started running, all running in different directions. I was out of breath and very afraid that they would take me.”

To escape the police, he ran back to a house they lived in before just to get news of Felix’s death.

According to reports from Morocco, authorities from the Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima municipality told media outlets that when officers arrived at the scene, one of the migrants was already unconscious.

However, the migrants say Félix was in good health before the police arrived. According to witness testimonies gathered by the Moroccan Association for Human Rights in Nador, he was “hit violently on the head” by police after being arrested by the beach.

Police in the region are said to have opened an investigation into the circumstances of his death. Meanwhile, thirteen other migrants who accompanied Felix’s body to the hospital were arrested.