CEUTA — Police had to shoot in the air to stop a crowd lynching a man accused of strangling an eight-year-old girl.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, the accused was dragged by a crowd from his home in the area of Ceuta called Príncipe Alfonso and was about to be lynched when officers intervened.

The man, named only as Kassem E.Y, was taken into custody in a police station in Ceuta, in Spain’s North African enclave.

The angry crowd erected barricades and burned rubbish bins in a disturbance which went on for hours.

Suhaila was to be buried on Tuesday.

The accused, the boyfriend of the dead girl’s mother, had been arrested in Morocco.

Police had been called to the house after receiving a call in which an unidentified person said she was not dead.

A number of forensic tests are being conducted on the body of the child to determine exactly how she died.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news