Spain's Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, has tempered comments he made last week following the deaths of at least 23 migrants on the border between Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Melilla.
He told Spanish online newspaper La Sexta that he had not seen pictures of corpses at the scene when he praised the response of the security forces to the storming of the border fence by hundreds of migrants.
At the time, Mr Sanchez blamed mafias involved in human trafficking for the tragedy.
However, he told the paper he did not regret his commitment to a strong national immigration policy.