Madrid, Spain /
At least 9 migrants died and 48 disappeared when the boat in which they were traveling overturned when they piled up on the side to be rescued near The Iron, one of the Spanish islands of the canariesnear the coasts of africareported this Saturday Maritime Rescue.
The Spanish sea rescue organization reported in a statement that 84 people were traveling in the boatand that have been “9 bodies recovered” while a “search operation for 48 missing people” is underway.
There is 27 survivors rescued. The wreck occurred 4 miles south of the port of La Estacaon the island of El Hierro, after, a little after midnight, the migrants themselves called the emergency services.
“At 00:14 Canary Islands time,” “a call was received from a telephone cayuco, with 84 people,” he explained. Maritime Rescue.
“During the rescue operations, the canoe won when its occupants concentrated on one of the sides,” explained the rescue organization.
“All this, in addition, with the difficulty of a rescue that occurred at night and in adverse weather conditions with wind gusts of about 20 knots,” he added.
The Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands is located northwest of the African coast and consists of seven great islands.
At the beginning of September, the shipwreck of a boat with migrants trying to reach Europe via the Canary Islands already claimed at least 39 lives off the coast of Senegal.
Thousands of migrants have lost their lives in recent years trying to dangerous Atlantic route to Europe from Africa, mainly through the Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands, aboard overcrowded and often dilapidated boats.
death route
“Unfortunately, a new tragedy once again underlines the danger of the Atlantic Route,” the president of the Canary Islands region, Fernando Clavijo, wrote on social network X.
“We need Spain and the EU to act decisively in the face of a structural humanitarian drama. These are children, women and men. Lives that are extinguished meters from Europe’s southern border,” he lamented.
From the August 28, 1994 and the arrival of two young Sahrawis aboard a simple boat to the Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands – when what is known in Spain as the “Canary route” began -, some 200 thousand migrants have taken this route to reach Europe, according to the Spanish Ministry of the Interior.
At the end of AugustSpain signed agreements with Mauritania and Gambia to strengthen cooperation against traffickers of illegal migrants to Europe and in favor of regulated migration, during a tour of the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez.
Until August 15, 22,304 migrants had arrived in the Canary Islands since the beginning of the year, compared to 9,864 in the same period of 2023, which represents an increase of 126%. In Spain as a whole, the increase is 66% (from 18,745 to 31,155).
In 2023 they entered the Canary Islands almost 40 thousand immigrants (39,910), a record that will probably be broken again this year, since the improvement in navigation conditions from September usually translates into a sharp increase in crossings at the end of the year. The president of the Autonomous Community -region- of the Canary Islands hopes that the number of arrivals exceed 50 thousand this year.
However, this maritime route between Africa and the Canary Islands is also a true “death route”since the crossings are made aboard overcrowded rafts that are poorly equipped to resist the currents, which are very strong in this part of the Atlantic and cause numerous shipwrecks. Some of the boats depart from points located more than a thousand kilometers from the Canary Islands.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), UN agency, at least 4,857 people have died or disappeared on this maritime route since 2014.
But the real figure is undoubtedly much higher. Caminando Fronteras, a Spanish NGO that helps migrants and evaluates the number of victims based on the testimonies of survivors, estimates that 18,680 people have paid with their lives for wanting to reach Europe.
CHZ
