From Le Figaro with AFP
Posted 54 minutes ago
A young Malian migrant at a “boat graveyard” in Arinaga on the Spanish Canary Island of Gran Canaria in 2021. LLUIS GENE / AFP
Almost 1,500 African migrants have arrived on the shores of the Canary Islands since Saturday, notably aboard a boat carrying a record 321 people, the rescue services of the Spanish archipelago off the coast of Morocco said on Sunday.
In total, 1,427 migrants reached the islands in various precarious boats between the night of Friday and Saturday and the morning of Sunday, rescue services said on the social network X (formerly Twitter). The migrants come from sub-Saharan Africa, a spokesman for the emergency services told AFP. On Saturday, a wooden canoe with 321 people on board reached the island of El Hierro, a rescue service spokeswoman told AFP.
The previous record for the number of passengers on a single boat arriving in the Canary Islands was 280 on October 3. Public television broadcaster TVE showed images of the colorful boat’s arrival in the harbor on Saturday, surrounded by people smiling and waving Migrants.
Record numbers
The number of arriving migrants has increased in recent weeks. According to the latest figures from the Spanish Interior Ministry, the archipelago received 23,537 migrants between January 1 and October 15, almost 80% more than in the same period last year.
In the first two weeks of October, 8,561 migrants arrived, a record number since a previous migration crisis in 2006, according to Spanish media. This “resurge” in arrivals is linked to “destabilization in the Sahel,” Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska estimated during of a visit to the Canary Islands this week.
The migration route via the Canary Islands has been very busy in recent years due to tightening controls in the Mediterranean. However, during these long and dangerous crossings with small boats, shipwrecks often occur from Morocco or Western Sahara, about a hundred kilometers away, but also further south from Mauritania, Senegal and even Gambia, about a thousand kilometers away.