The Spanish authorities announced on Thursday June 22 that they had rescued at least 350 migrants in the past twenty-four hours in five boats drifting off the Canary Islands, the day after a shipwreck that left at least two dead. .
“During the night, the emergency services took care of 114 migrants who were traveling on board two rescued boats” by the Spanish sea rescuers, announced on Twitter the emergency services of the Canary Islands, an archipelago located in the Atlantic Ocean, off the northwest coast of Africa.
These migrants were taken care of on the island of Lanzarote and on that of Gran Canaria, where “a baby and his mother [ont été] transferred to hospital for mild pathologies”they added.
A third boat was rescued at dawn and its 54 passengers brought back to Lanzarote, the same source then said. Two other boats were rescued in the afternoon, a spokeswoman for the Spanish sea rescue service told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Deadly shipwreck
The first was spotted off the island of El Hierro, with 121 people on board, including six women and four children, mainly from sub-Saharan African countries. The second, an inflatable boat, about 13 kilometers from the island of Gran Canaria, with sixty-one people on board.
These new rescues come the day after a deadly shipwreck about 160 kilometers off the coast of the island of Gran Canaria. Spanish sea rescuers, who initially announced that they had recovered the body of a minor, told AFP that they had located another body, that of a man.
Some twenty-four people who were rescued on Wednesday by the Moroccan authorities were brought to Morocco, according to a spokeswoman for the Spanish rescuers, who assured that she had no information on the missing following the sinking.
The Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras – which draws up its assessments based in particular on the testimonies of migrants or their families – affirmed, for its part, on Wednesday that thirty-nine people had died in total in this shipwreck. “including four women and a baby”. She assures us that the boat had been asking to be rescued from “more than twelve hours”.
dangerous crossing
Departures of migrant boats to the Canary Islands, often from the coasts of the disputed territory of Western Sahara, have multiplied in recent days due to good weather conditions.
The World App
The Morning of the World
Every morning, find our selection of 20 articles not to be missed
Download the app
Since the tightening of controls in the Mediterranean, the migratory route to the Canary Islands, located in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of northwestern Africa, has been particularly busy. Shipwrecks are frequent, the crossing can be very dangerous because of the strong currents and the state of the boats.
On Tuesday, the lifeless body of a pregnant woman was found aboard another boat carrying around fifty migrants off the Canary Islands.
About fifty Moroccan migrants have also been missing for more than ten days off the coast of southern Morocco, after having tried to reach Spain aboard a clandestine boat, we learned Thursday from a close source. of one of the missing.
In a report made public at the end of 2022, Caminando Fronteras claimed that more than 11,200 migrants had died or disappeared since 2018 trying to reach Spain, which is one of the main gateways for illegal immigration in Spain. Europe. That’s an average of six a day.