Spanish authorities rescued more than a hundred migrants in two boats drifting off the Canary Islands on Wednesday night, a day after a fatal shipwreck that killed at least two people.
These migrants “traveled aboard two boats rescued by Spanish sea rescuers,” the rescue services of the Canary Islands, an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of Africa, said on Twitter.
More specifically, 54 people “in good health” were being cared for on the island of Lanzarote and 61 on the island of Gran Canaria, including “a baby and his mother who were hospitalized with minor illnesses,” they added.
These new rescue operations come the day after a fatal shipwreck occurred about 160km off the coast of the island of Gran Canaria.
Spanish sea rescuers, who initially said they had recovered the body of a minor, told AFP they had found another body, that of a man.
The 24 people rescued by Moroccan authorities on Wednesday have been taken to Morocco, said a spokeswoman for Spanish rescuers, who assured them they had no information about the missing after the shipwreck.
For its part, the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras, which bases its assessments primarily on the statements of migrants or their families, announced on Wednesday that a total of 39 people died in this shipwreck, “including four women and a baby”. She assures that the boat has been asking for rescue for “more than twelve hours”.
Departures of migrant boats to the Canary Islands, often from the shores of the disputed territory of Western Sahara, have multiplied in recent days due to good weather conditions.
Since the tightening of controls in the Mediterranean, the migratory route to the Canary Islands, which lie in the Atlantic off the coast of north-west Africa, has been particularly busy. Shipwrecks are common here and the crossing can be particularly dangerous due to the strong currents and the condition of the boats.
On Tuesday, the lifeless body of a pregnant woman was found on board another boat with around fifty migrants off the Canary Islands.
In a report published in late 2022, Caminando Fronteras claimed that more than 11,200 migrants have 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.