The border checks started at midnight on Saturday, a week after Italy introduced similar restrictions on Spanish visitors.

French interior minister Laurent Nuñez said all member states had expressed solidarity with Spain and that the interference was trying 'to sow division among' them.

Local officials are calling on the government to transfer the 1,100 children to mainland Spain.

The surge saw around 72,000 migrants enter Ceuta in recent days, though authorities say all but a few thousand have since returned to Morocco.

Haiti has expanded voter registration as the government presses ahead with long-delayed elections despite worsening gang violence. While Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé says the state is fully mobilised, many voters fear insecurity could undermine the credibility of the ballot.

Officials estimate that more than 49,000 people crossed between Morocco and Ceuta in a 24-hour period.

The Italian Navy said its troops boarded a tanker in the Mediterranean Sea on Sunday it claimed was linked to Russia.

Migrants and residents alike complained on Saturday of the conditions in Ceuta, Spain’s North African enclave, that saw 60,000 migrants breach the border in the last few days.

Life in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta is slowly getting back to normal, residents say, days after a sudden surge of some 60,000 migrants entered the tiny territory on the tip of North Africa. Most of the migrants have returned to Morocco and shops and cafes are starting to reopen.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu is on a two-day visit to Rabat as France hopes to cement their recent rapprochement.