Video has emerged of a February 7 incident where Spanish border police fired rubber bullets as a deterrent at a group of migrants who tried to swim to Spanish territory from North Africa.

There were some 200 migrants in the incident, all trying to swim around a  breakwater that separates Morocco and Spain.

Several drowned.

Before the video was publicly released, Spain's Interior Minster, Jorge Fernandez, told parliament the rubber bullets were never intended to hit the migrants.

They were fired, he said, as a deterrent.

This video was released by Spanish police showing migrants throwing stones at the border fence on February 7.

It doesn't show the moment the migrants entered the sea to swim around breakwater toward Spanish soil.

Every year, thousands of Africans try to reach Europe through Spain.

Some 3,000 illegal migrants entered Spain in the first half of last year.

That's double the same figure for 2012.